Farewell to Richie McCaw and Dan Carter: Sport’s greatest double act
One of sport’s greatest double acts is about to enter its last compelling tour. In New Zealand’s perfect world, under some beautiful long white Twickenham cloud, Richard Hugh McCaw, rugby’s ultimate warrior leader, and Daniel William Carter, its perfect 10, would take one final All Blacks bow together as world champions.
It is every New Zealander’s wish. A nation fancies that it would only be fitting if their two colossi, who have not just been the inspiration behind a phenomenal era of success for the All Blacks but have also proved themselves to be models of humility as well as supreme excellence for 12 years, could bow out with one last crowning dual accolade. Yes, McCaw, the most-capped player and most prolific winner in Test history, and Carter, its biggest points scorer, may have won the World Cup on home soil four years ago but Carter did a noble job of adopting a brave face as he had to endure watching the final injured from the sidelines. Somehow, that did not feel right.
The new ideal plotline now has it that, after battling back from injury woes to remind us why he is very probably the finest fly-half in history, Carter orchestrates the All Blacks’ charge to becoming the first team ever to retain the Webb Ellis Cup while his Crusaders’ pal, captain McCaw, lifts the trophy to cement his position as the best to ever play the game before hang-gliding his way into retirement.
Except, best laid plans and all that. Isn’t that Boys’ Own stuff all just too improbable? For even New Zealand has been fretting just a little about this emotional Richie ‘n Dan farewell storyline. Like a couple of legendary rockers who are increasingly prone to the odd bum note and erratic gig, they then produce a blinder of a show that recalls their absolute heyday. Everybody’s confident but there has been the odd concern that this World Cup could turn out to be just be one tour too many for the pair of them.
In truth, the main question marks have been over Carter, rather than their seemingly indestructible captain, even if the mighty scavenger McCaw was left with an empty plate at the breakdown when the twin Aussie jackals, Michael Hooper and David Pocock, got to work around the frenzied fringes in Sydney last month.
No worries, there, though. McCaw has had snipers suggesting he’s not the player he was for long enough, now. As Grant Fox, who helped kick the All Blacks to the inaugural trophy in 1987 observed: “For the last three years people have been asking the same questions about Richie and each year he keeps proving them wrong. Last year, he was nominated for world player of the year again.” And this year, he bustled over for the cheekily conceived try, after bursting forward to take a flat-thrown line out ball, which sealed victory over the Springboks with just three minutes left on the clock. It was his last hurrah on South African soil. McCaw called it and he executed it. Perfectly.
That’s why, at 34, the man still has some aura about him, and why the New Zealanders still need his clear thinking under the greatest pressure. The understudy seven, Sam Cane may be a dynamic successor but, for the moment, he knows his place. Yet what of Carter? At 33, there are those who believe that his powers, eroded by injuries and age since the last World Cup, make him a pale shadow of the player who a decade ago against the Lions offered up a fair impression of the most complete rugby footballer the game had ever seen.
His legs have gone, some said. He’d become more conservative, easier to predict, he’d lost some of the old sweet ‘pass, pass, pass, break’ rhythm and his old Rolls Royce reliability could no longer be taken for granted. Against the Wallabies in Sydney, he seemed remarkably out of sorts, missing a crucial tackle, making a mess of a couple of restarts and miscuing penalty kicks at goal and to touch. Everybody has off days; it was just that, for many a year, “Carter the unstoppable points machine” never seemed to be afflicted by them. His threat as the master creator seemed to have diminished along with try-scoring prowess - a man with 29 Test scores to his name hasn’t crossed the whitewash in his last 29 matches - and where once, it would have been sacrilege to suggest he should be dropped, some critics in New Zealand had been openly suggesting it is time for the talents of Beauden Barrett and Lima Sopoaga to be unleashed instead. “Dan Carter in particular is not delivering,” wrote one trenchant critic, Chris Rattue, a columnist for the New Zealand Herald who has never been afraid to say the unspeakable (he once dubbed the Welsh team the “village idiots of world rugby”) after the Sydney loss. “Carter and Conrad Smith look like they are playing on memory, and struggling to rise to the occasion - particularly Carter. “I’d say he’s in trouble.” So what happens? Of course, Carter only went and ran the show beautifully in the Bledisloe Cup return, controlling, linking, running, creating, off-loading, as if in his pomp. Hansen just purred: “He’s been questioned by a lot of people, and he stood up. He was special tonight – the Dan Carter of old.” When you have been as wondrous a talent as Carter, you need to be cut some slack, anyway. His critics also never mentioned the mature game management and old goal kicking accuracy which made all the soothing difference in the historic but very testing season-opening win over a Samoan side in Apia, fired up by hosting the first-ever Test against the All Blacks on the island.
He wasn’t too shabby either in his final Test on his home ground in Christchurch against Argentina. As he kicked 14 points and McCaw went over for one final try in the city which had revered them for so long in the colours of the Crusaders and Canterbury, this was exactly the sort of poignant, emotional send off for the pair that coach Steve Hansen would kill to see at Twickenham one last time before McCaw either calls it a day or plays oversees and Carter forsakes the black shirt for one last lucrative payday with Racing Metro.
Of course, Hansen knows the Carter-McCaw farewell roadshow could be a distraction but he also senses its power to energise the quest. You could see it at Eden Park against Australia as not just the big two but magnificent veterans like Conrad Smith, Ma’a Nonu. Keven Mealamu and Tony Woodcock all took their farewell All Black bow on home soil.
“That’s going to be happening all year, everywhere we go it’s going to be Richie’s last Test or Dan’s last Test,” he told reporters after the Samoa game.
“As a group we have to sit down and say ‘righto, how are we going to deal with this, boys?’. Are we going to embrace it and make it work for us, or is it going to be something we carry around like a sack of coal on our backs and it becomes a burden?” It has to be an inspiration for them, surely. The reason Hansen will trust in both of them to deliver one more time is because, ever since they first teamed up at international level to help beat France in Christchurch in 2003, they have been New Zealand rugby’s luxury comfort blanket. If the king doesn’t rob you, the prince will dismantle you.
Just think of this. In those 12 years since that first duet, they have played 91 Tests in tandem and lost only nine. There has been a total of 162 All Blacks Tests during that period and either McCaw or Carter, or both, have featured in all but 16, winning 128 of 146 matches and losing just 16. That’s a success ratio of 88.36 per cent. Omnipresent and so often omnipotent, no wonder it is hard to imagine All Black life without them. Even hardened team-mates like Sam Whitelock can wistfully recall their high school days, growing up as a Carter and McCaw acolyte.
“I remember watching them at boarding school thinking how awesome they are as players, one day if you can be half as good as them you’d be proud. Then he met them and realised they were good down-to-earth blokes, not distant legends, that they did more than anyone to shape the ‘All Black way’, demanding the highest standards but never being high and mighty themselves, happy to grab a broom and clean up dressing rooms and never letting teammates get too cocky.
“It’s a massive thing running out alongside those guys,” says Whitelock. So imagine what an inspiration it will offer these All Blacks to run out alongside their one-time heroes one last time in a World Cup final.
The mystique of the old adage ‘If Carter doesn’t get you, McCaw will’ still wields its power.
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