Dan Carter - will we ever see his like again?
Dan Carter's place in New Zealand, and world, rugby history is assured.
Dan Carter – My Story as told to Duncan Grieve, Upstart Press
A two-time World Cup winner, the leading scorer in Test matches and the complete first five-eighths, running, kicking, passing and defending
Part of his story will also be remembered as a result of his publishing liaison with Duncan Grieve in 'Dan Carter – My Story'.
This book serves as a timely reminder that no matter how gifted, how skilful, how successful a player may be in terms of rewards from the game, there is no replacement for hard work.
It is all too easy in the life of instant gratification that has now beset the world to believe that anyone of the afore-mentioned qualities would be sufficient to achieve a career of brilliance. Wrong.
It takes plenty of work and effort and that is without taking into account the vicissitudes that can be thrown in along the way like injury, self doubt and frustration that as you get older things don't recover quite so quickly.
All have been part of Carter's career and he talks about those moments in an engaging manner which nonetheless makes the point emphatically.
Too often New Zealand rugby fans expect a player possessing the ability to turn on brilliance, as Carter could do, at the drop of a hat. It has been fodder for talkback radio hosts for yonks. They asked why if he could do it in some games why couldn't he do it in others?
Oh that it were so easy.
It is a fact for every glimpse of class a player reveals, it is analysed, scrutinised, dissected, bisected and broken down to the nth degree by opposition analysts. Life becomes so much tougher.
But rugby is a game that offers ways of containing the attention of opposing defences and allowing class to flourish.
For those who had written Carter off ahead of the 2015 season, especially with rivals lining up to potentially claim his place in an All Blacks backline, his innate class enabled him to not only meet that challenge, but to raise the bar ever higher.
It is difficult to imagine a way in which a player could leave a betterimpression for rugby eternity than what Carter achieved through the play-offs stages of the 2015 World Cup. Possibly only the efforts of team-mate and skipper Richie McCaw, under his own scrutiny and pressure in the loose forwards from Australia, come close.
There is some tittle-tattle in the book, the punch-up in Johannesburg with the New Zealand Colts, the taxi ride to London with some team-mates on the 2005 northern tour and a failed business venture, but Carter is not one for generally getting too involved in this sort of carry-on and the book is more about the development and sustenance of a career that provided so much.
It is interspersed with some diary moments of strategic points through the last two years.
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