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New Zealand All Blacks' player Dan Carter, left gets the ball away from Australia's Berrick Barnes during their Bledisloe Cup rugby test (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill).
If you think that an Aussie is writing this, you’re right. But let me hasten to add that the opinions expressed here are exclusively those of Kiwis I’ve talked to (ex-pats in London), so Wallaby bias plays no part in this post.
I wanted to hear what Kiwis who’d seen other ABs in the No. 10 jersey thought about Dan Carter’s place in the pecking order of the greats, so I made sure the panelists were all over the age of 40.
Of the ten fans I polled, five chose Carter as the best AB five-eighth, four chose Andrew Mehrtens, and one chose Grant Fox. The Mehrten guys thought that he was just as deadly a place kicker as Carter, but his running skills were much sharper, a point hard to dispute as Dan doesn’t often break the line in test matches.
They claimed that Carter is a little labored in his distribution, although some might say he’s simply relaxed. The Fox fan said that Grant was better at feeding his inside backs than Carter or Mehrtens, and that Grant pioneered a different, more effective kind of place-kicking technique which has since been adopted by most kickers everywhere.
The Carter people countered with their man’s great cover defence, the way he hares across the field to snare a ball carrier (sometimes a little too high). And the fact that Dan is superb punting for the line.
Inevitably, the talk got around to Carter’s world-wide challengers today. The panel was unanimous, nobody’s near as good today, although, looking back outside the ABs, they were sorry that Wilko’s test career is over as his great kicking and on-field presence was a highwater mark, and they had nothing but praise for Larkham’s ability to spot or make a gap.
But as for 2010, they thought it noticeable that there are so few good five-eigths on the scene. They admire Cooper’s torpedo pass, his sly offloads, and the ever-present running danger he represents for an opposing team but feel he’s flakily inconsistent. They figure that Steyne wouldn’t be playing for the Boks but for his boot, that Parks and O’Gara are there for the same reason, that Flood is coming into his own now that he has the confidence to run, that Sexton has the most potential in the NH, and that Hook, Jones and Trinh-Duc are merely serviceable. However, they fear a healthy-again Michalak and worry that he could come back to hurt the ABs as he did in the 2007 WRC.
In fact, Les Bleus bothers them. The recent thrashing they took at the hands of the Wallabies didn’t comfort them at all because everybody knows the French team is as dangerously changeable as a bush fire.
Still, they feel the ABs are in great shape for the RWC, and that all the talk about peaking too soon is nonsense as the team is still building and may see some surprising changes. Seven of the ten thought that SBW would not only play the important games at 13 but could turn out to be the ABs’ major strike weapon.
As for their main competition, six of them felt that the Wallabies will be the team to beat, the others were divided between England and the Boks, but all of them saw France as their main bugaboo. Even though the ABs’ record in NZ against France is 18 and four, France is two and one against them in the RWC, and that’s an uncomfortable thought, so they told me.
At this point an Aussie pal wandered up, and one of the Kiwis said to him, “Okay, mate, if you could choose one player from our team to play for the Wallabies, who would you choose?”
My pal didn’t even have to think about it. And, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t Dan Carter.
“Brad Thorn,” he said. “Give us Thorn and we’ll beat you every time.”
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.