Ronan O’Gara: Extraordinary thing about Dan Carter? How ordinary he is
Dan Carter training in isolation at his Auckland home during the Covid-19 level 4 lockdown in April 2020. ‘The more time I spent with my family, the more I realised that I’ve clocked off. Now is the time to commit to that decision,’ he said recently.
One didn’t necessarily need to strike up a friendship with Dan Carter to appreciate just how similar New Zealanders and Munster people tend to be. But several moments over the course of our time together in Paris helped to confirm and cement that impression.
By the time I landed in Christchurch after Racing 92 to begin work with the remarkable, ordinary folk at the Crusaders, the personality traits were instantly recognisable from dealing with Carter.
Uncomplicated, respectful, diligent. Studious.
Dan would have been a Munster legend had he ever joined the province like his compatriot Dougie Howlett. He would have savoured those special days with the crew in the provincial outback after a big European victory, concealed in a snug somewhere in Tipp or Waterford, Kilkenny even. Settled in for a few hours, a night, occasionally longer, fitting in each other’s company like fingers in a glove.
When the Crusaders won the Super Rugby Championship in 2018 and 2019, we got on the same team bus that Munster might have. There was no big-city neon lights or brash nightclubs.
Instead, we pit-stopped at the old rugby clubhouses dotted around the outskirts of Christchurch, delighting in our own company with a few tunes and a ghetto-blaster. These places were dripping with character, wooden stools and beams, pictures in crooked frames along the walls, and we happy as pigs in a trough. And you’d look around and see Razor with a contended smile away in the corner and it might as well have been Axel.
Because we Irish were one-time brain-washed into believing that, in rugby terms, New Zealanders were a superior race and that we were graced to be on the same field, it was easy to slip into an inferiority complex. Easier to feel subservient. But they are so like Irish people — uncannily so.
The boy from Southbridge was the embodiment of that innate humbleness from the first day we kicked for tricks against each other at Racing’s training ground at Plessis-Robinson in a south-western suburb of Paris. It was a remarkable and valuable insight into the culture I would walk into a few years later in Christchurch.
At first, of course, it felt slightly awkward to be coaching Dan Carter, but only as long as it took for us to step back and give the relationship time to blossom. What still sticks in my mind is his warmth as a person and, more important still from a professional point of view, being open to feedback and the idea of getting better. Even the greatest players in the world can’t leave any detail loose. It all needs to be tied up.
My two years with him in Paris confirmed the greatest truism in sport: Talent is one thing, but sporting success comes down to personality. The greatest player in the game underpinned one of the most important philosophies I have learned as a coach — it’s the person, not the player, you are working with.
There have been so many frustrating occasions down the years you scream (internally) about a player: ‘Why, why, why, do you have this attitude? Why are you behaving like this? Why can you not see the possibilities of a growth mindset, being open to a small bit of change?’ It’s incredible at times how someone so average can be so closed, and yet Dan Carter was looking to get better every day.
I will always remember this about him: it was such a beautifully simple pleasure to work with someone
obsessed with improvement.
At the beginning, the obsession was mine, studying him like he was some type of extra-terrestrial. Where were those mystical powers? When I could find nothing, I felt cheated: ‘Dan, you fucker, you are holding something back from me. Come on, share it’. All he would talk about was doing the simple things over and over again.
Of course, they only become simple when you work on them diligently day in, day out.
Getting to demystify Dan is a microcosm of sorts for the northern hemisphere’s understanding of New Zealand rugby. But it took me to go to the Crusaders and see this appetite for learning 23 times over every day to properly understand the psyche there.
Teams in this part of the world have caught up, in some respects, defensively, but when your front five have refined their ball-handling to such a degree, it’s still possible to operate in the smallest corridors of space.
Carter had the full package. Threat with the ball in hand, a kicking game to marvel at, sublime game management, but above all, what separated him from other great 10s was a capacity to run hard at the line and make passes while staying square. It was that ability to attract defenders and create space for colleagues that made him a demon to play against and a colleague to die for.
He scored 33 of the All Blacks’ points in the 48-18 Test win over the Lions in 2005 in Wellington. Unless or until you are pitchside and involved in such a demolition, it is impossible to describe how brutal, yet beautiful, a performance that was. Even though it was against my team, there was a visceral sense of witnessing art in a 10 jersey that evening in the Cake Tin.
It was actually frightening that someone could produce the pinnacle of their form on the biggest, global stage. Sometimes television doesn’t do it justice, you have to be there to see it for its real worth.
In the wake of his retirement from the game this week, there is the predictable debate on Carter’s place among the greats of rugby. My admiration for Richie McCaw is total, but I’d rate Carter ahead of him because of the influence he exerted over so many games, oppositions, and moments. Out-halves are No 10 for a reason — they are the conductors. They may be piano players, but everyone plays to their tune if it’s the right one.
Beauden Barrett is a fantastic rugby player. Carter is all of that, but a supreme strategist as well. He is superior in that regard. Barrett’s most striking attribute is that acceleration, but he doesn’t pull all the levers to the same extent Carter can. When New Zealand crashed out in the quarter-final of the 2007 World Cup to France, 20-18, Carter was replaced after 56 minutes. It was only then that things began to unravel in the face of a Gallic storm.
Carter materially influenced the ebb and flow of big games all the time. And it wasn’t just the Broadway shows. Recently I was talking to former Crusader, Tim Bateman, whom I have lauded in this column before for his game intelligence. Tim, like Carter, went playing in Japan and said that every time he lost with Toshiba to Dan’s Kobelco Steelers, it was indisputably down to the fact that Carter was playing. He was literally the difference.
Some people erroneously presumed that after finally lifting the World Cup in 2015, Carter’s European intentions were merely to set him up for retirement. But Carter wasn’t looking for Easy Street. He was looking for a new challenge.
As a coach in Racing 92, I can comfortably put to bed the idea that he was here on a lap of honour.
In those initial stages when I could raise my leg high enough to still give it a decent funt, I was mad up for taking him on in a kicking contest. The surprise was that he was every bit as desperate for victory and validation. The very best are very driven.
Like it has for many of us, the Covid lockdown gave him pause for thought. He trained with the Auckland Blues last year after returning from Japan, but never played a game. As 2021 dawned, he began to see that even returning to Christchurch to play was time away from Honor and the kids — Fox, Marco, and Rocco, time he was no longer willing to give.
“I took a few months to chew it over,” he said. “The more time I spent with my family, the more I realised that I’ve clocked off. Now is the time to commit to that decision.
“I’ve got three young kids — seven, five, and two — with a fourth on the way. It’s about time I started pulling my weight around the house.”
Hope Jess doesn’t read this.
