Racing Metro have eyes set on €1.6m man Dan Carter

MY boss has a dream and all available evidence thus far indicates he is going to make it happen, writes Ronan O'Gara.

Fri, 19 Dec, 2014 - 00:00

On a chill evening in November 2016, Jacky Lorenzetti, the owner of Racing Metro, will unveil the central tenet of his masterplan for the club at Racing’s new Arena 92. With a concert by the Rolling Stones for starters. Followed by a game before a sell-out crowd between Racing Metro and the All Blacks. With Dan Carter playing a half for each team.

When I suggested here some time back that we weren’t far from the €1m a season player, I had the likes of Carter in mind.

Yesterday he inked a deal that will bring him to Paris after next year’s World Cup. The stories tell me he’ll get €1.6m a year.

It’s a good deal for Carter and, hopefully, Racing. If this deal is the strongest indicator yet of the wealth of Top 14 rugby, it’s also a statement of intent within the business here in France that Jacky is going after the big three — Toulouse, Toulon and Clermont.

Ever since Mr Lorenzetti got involved in rugby, the All Blacks are his fairytale team and Carter is the most talked about player in the world. From a commercial point of view, putting a totemic figure like Carter in a Racing Metro shirt says more about the club’s intent than most everything else.

What’s so difficult at the minute for Racing at the moment is generating the sort of community that all great clubs feed off. Our current base in Colombes is not conducive to an empathetic relationship between players and supporters.

With a running track around the pitch, it’s very difficult to create an atmosphere for a full house, much less an average of 6,000 supporters. All the top teams have loyal and passionate supporters and we are nowhere near that yet.

Thanks@DanCarter for making Christmas a little tougher for all of us here !!#nochristmasbonusforus #sharethelove💶💶😜😜
— Ronan O Gara (@RonanOGara10) December 18, 2014

The new Arena and the arrival of Carter next season is a big step towards correcting that. Let’s not kid ourselves here. There was no sleep lost over Johnny Sexton announcing he was going back to Leinster next season.

The staff at Racing were told to prepare a portfolio of the best ten out-halves in the world. That was delivered to Lorenzetti’s desk and his choice was Carter. The interest has been there a while, but the buttons were pressed when the Sexton decision was confirmed.

If he still retains the ambition and the hunger, Carter’s age (33 next March) is irrelevant. It was a special experience to be in Wellington for the second Lions test in 2005 when he delivered the most complete test performance from a 10 I’ve seen. He was 22 at the time. It’s a decade on, but if he’s motivated, his body will hold up fine. He’s minded himself and he’s been out of the game for periods.

How he emerges from the 2015 World Cup will tell a tale, but having spent a truncated season in Perpignan (he ruptured an achilles in his sixth game for the club), it’s not as if he’s moving to an alien culture.

Racing is an international club and Carter must surely recognise the commercial appeal of a marketplace like Paris. If I was him, I’d be licking my lips and doing somersaults all at a once. As would I if I was his agent.

There’s a lot of big brands in Paris. He has business to do on the pitch, but there’s a lot of it off the pitch too.

Johnny Wilkinson and Carter are the two greatest tens in rugby’s modern era. The signing and the razzmatazz that will attend his arrival in Paris do not interest me in the slightest. I’ll get excited when I see what condition he’s in and what attitude he has when he arrives.

You are talking about an iconic rugby figure but it all comes down to a question of whether he comes hungry to do a job for Racing.

You expect certain things from great professionals. There is no doubt that he’ll shift merchandise and draw in the general sports fan — he is one of a very small club of stellar talents that can transcend the sport. But I am looking at his arrival through the prism of whether he can make us Top 14 champions.

My knowledge of the individual is that he’s very grounded and diligent, but Dan’s also able to smile and enjoy himself, and that’s important too. He has a good personality balance. And business is business. Sexton goes out, Carter comes in.

They are the front liners but those behind Carter like Johan Goosen can prosper too. If there’s an upside to the Top 14 slog, it’s that everyone gets a chance. When you have the jersey in Munster, you know you’re going to be playing in all the big games.

In France, you’re competing on so many fronts that you have to rotate — 28 Championship games, nine in the Champions Cup if you go to the final. That’s a lot of games — without Top 14 playoffs. The number one out-half might play 25, but his understudy will get 13.

The announcement yesterday brought about an interesting comparison on my job spec at Racing from the time Sexton and I arrived here. These days, working with the kickers amounts to less than 10% of my working week.

I’m happy to do reps with the lads, but in terms of technical advice etc, it’s not a road I want to go down. It’s more about the game and the sum of its parts rather than any one individual facet of rugby. The breadth of coaching skills is alarming.

There are days in this job I think I’m a million miles away, when you feel you’ve so much more to do. And then there are other occasions, watching a session, when you think ‘yeah, I’d love to have a crack off that’.

In the end, I didn’t get down to Clermont last Sunday. You have to admire the honesty of the Munster effort but the last minute penalty that brought with it a losing bonus point can’t mask the fact that Clermont were a superior force for 60 minutes of the game.

They stopped playing in the last ten minutes, but if the game was played ten times, they’d have won them all. But here’s the rub — Munster aren’t that far away. It’s not as if they need ten new players, but they do require someone like a Ma’a Nonu, who could make a really big difference. The link between midfield to the outer three is a genuine issue at the moment.

Leinster’s struggles are of greater concern and their tight squeeze against Quins was no surprise. That 15 is very average compared to the glory days. Look at the backline last Saturday night — Rob Kearney, Zane Kirchner, Luke Fitzgerald, Ian Madigan, Darragh Fanning; Jimmy Gopperth, Isaac Boss. It’s not Nacewa, Sexton, O’Driscoll, D’Arcy, McFadden, Dave Kearney.

Things change.