Dan Carter: All Blacks's goal is back-to-back World Cups   17 Apr 2014

Oliver Brown

New Zealand No 10 is loving his sabbatical, including a trip to the Masters, however his only motive is to return fit and fresh for more years as a dominant force.

A sabbatical would once have seemed an alien concept to Dan Carter, an affront to the immersive experience of being an All Black. But with 100 Tests has come a certain brittleness, a realisation that the best bulwark to his longevity is an escape.
For five months, and the first time in more than a decade, Carter has luxuriated in the fulfilment of his own ‘bucket list’, an enviable feat for a man of 32. The London boardroom where we meet, admiring gun-barrel views of Tower Bridge, is just the latest stop in a week that has already encompassed the Coachella Festival in the Colorado Desert, plus three days at the Masters in Augusta.
“I was just in the gym in working out, and the next thing I know Rory McIlroy and Jason Dufner come in,” he says. “It was pretty surreal.”
It helps that Carter can call upon the right contacts among the green jackets, securing an invitation from Craig Heatley, a New Zealand businessman with a £200 million fortune from television and also, for Masters week, chairman of the media committee. So seamlessly did Carter blend in that journalists at Adam Scott’s press conference were nonplussed to discover they shared a forum with the finest fly-half on the planet. “When I knew I had time off, I knew there were two places I just had to get to – one being the grand prix in Melbourne, and the other Augusta. It was an absolutely incredible experience.”
Carter has followed the path travelled by Richie McCaw, the All Blacks captain who, after his centenary of caps, was ordered by Steve Hansen, the head coach, to take time off for his own benefit. The ruse came at the right time, too, for this peerless No 10, who had found his powers compromised by a catalogue of stubborn injuries. Even on the ceremonial occasion of his 100th Test at Twickenham, where he was given a gold boot in his honour and for which father Neville flew over from the South Island, he limped off after 25 minutes with an Achilles strain. “It can be hard to move past certain injuries,” he admits. “I had four different ones before I reached my 100th, and my team-mates started joking that I was in the ‘nervous nineties’. To get that behind me was such a relief, and I still remember all the details of that week, the messages of congratulations. This time away has been a great chance to refresh my body and my mind.”
For all his easy amiability, Carter still has the deportment of the superstar. Preposterously good-looking, with a long scar on his left arm almost an obligatory war wound, he fools no one if he thinks his man-at-leisure serenity can obscure the image of the consummate kicker, the fearless tackler, the metronomic accumulator of 1,440 points for New Zealand, the linchpin of a first ever perfect season, the ‘man of the millennium’ in his native land. He speaks slowly, languorously, as if these achievements form not the slightest encumbrance.
“I won’t be reintegrating into rugby for a few months yet,” he says, aware that he will miss the three Test home series against England in June. “But then I’ll have the usual preseason of absolutely thrashing myself.”
He makes it sound as if he just needs to flick a switch. Would that fellow fly-half Jonny Wilkinson could change gear so smoothly, but then Carter has always played the cool cat to his adversary’s tortured soul. “Yeah, I put a huge emphasis on having balance in my life,” he says. “When I’m training or playing that’s where my focus is, but when I’m away from it I like to chill out.”
Conscious of Wilkinson’s imminent retirement at Toulon he could not, however, be more generous in his praise. “Jonny is going to be sorely missed. I have huge respect for him. When I started playing international rugby in 2003, he was right at the pinnacle of his career. He has had so many injury setbacks, but to have the resilience to hang in there, to know that success can never be fluked, is a reflection of the guy he is. He could easily play for another couple of years. He should be extremely proud of what he has achieved.”
Carter is only two years Wilkinson’s junior, but do not assume the natural onset of decrepitude in so brutal an arena has caught up with him yet. He keenly recalls the agony of missing New Zealand’s 2011 World Cup triumph in Auckland with a groin injury, and has every intention claiming his compensation in the next final at Twickenham on October 31, 2015. “I love playing on the big stage, and there’s no bigger stage than a World Cup final,” he says. “Unfortunately, I missed out three years ago, so you could say I’m pretty motivated to give myself a chance at the next one.”
Record-setting is paramount for this New Zealand side, if only because of its enriching of the All Black mythology, and the target of becoming the first country to win consecutive World Cups also obtrudes in Carter’s thinking. “Yeah, that’s not something you can shy away from,” Carter says.
“It’s something to embrace, as we really want to leave a legacy. We love creating history, and the fact that no team has done it before shows it is not easy to do. I’ve been involved in three World Cups, and bizarre things happen, which no can ever predict. But it is definitely a goal to win it back-to-back.”
One wonders how the All Blacks can motivate themselves afresh in 2014, after an immaculate 14-0 campaign that featured two especially majestic victories in Johannesburg and Dublin, but in Carter they have a man who will not settle for the mere impression of perfection. “We’re really proud of what we achieved last year, but we just have to put that aside,” he argues. “There has to be a new direction, new things for us to work on.
“There is no way we can continue to look back. We can take a lot of confidence in the situations we found ourselves in during 2013, because that win against Ireland showed the huge self-belief in this team. But we need to draw a line.”
Starting, one senses, when England roll into Eden Park on June  7. “England are building a lot of momentum. They will bring a confidence to New Zealand, wanting to knock us over at home.”
For once, he will be sitting it out, but few are as deeply imbued in the All Blacks’ body-and-soul ethos as Carter, for whom this life was all he ever craved since growing up in the tiny village of Southbridge, where his parents set up a pair of rugby posts in the garden as a present for his eighth birthday. And he has, despite the self-evident scars, no plans to relinquish it.
“My body and mind will tell me when it’s time to stop. You can’t control that sometimes, your body just says that enough is enough. But I just feel so fortunate to be able to call this my job.”
Not even the pristine parallel universe of Augusta, it appears, can mask where Carter’s true priorities lie.
Dan Carter kicked off MasterCard’s Worldwide Partnership with Rugby World Cup 2015. MasterCard will be looking to make Rugby World Cup 2015 priceless for players and fans.

Source:  Telegraph

Add a comment