In any sport, debates about the greatest of all time are almost constant and, for that reason alone, impossibly tedious – the more so in this age of incontinent social media. Such posturing is pointless. Then there is a sport like rugby. Even more pointless. How can you compare winger with prop, lock with scrum-half? How can you compare a relatively brief professional era with the long century or so of amateurism that preceded it?
Finally, there is the dread of being asked to write a tribute to some retiring superstar. How to pay sufficient tribute without embarrassing subject and self with that “greatest of all time” chestnut? No such problems with this one. Dan Carter has announced his retirement and so the man hailed by many at the tender age of 23 as the greatest they had seen, and who kept on getting greater, has left the stage at the age of 38.
How does one measure greatness? Well, here are a few ways. Two World Cups and nine championships with the All Blacks, titles with every first-class club (five) he has played for, 112 caps, most points in international rugby (1,598 – the next best being Jonny Wilkinson, 352 points behind), most points in Super Rugby (1,708 – in that instance 259 points ahead of the next best), 355 first-class matches, 4,292 first-class points … It all starts to become meaningless after a while.
More than the numbers, there is the player. Greatness may be a subjective conceit but what we surely can say without fear of dissent is that Carter was the most complete rugby player of all – and that is a hell of a thing in such a multi-faceted sport.
He might have struggled to play in the front row (mind you, give him a while to work on his neck muscles …) and may have required lifting against the tallest in the lineout, but otherwise there was not a skill a player could need of which he was not a master. Pace, power, kicking, passing, tackling, vision, nerve, consistency … even the dreaded ability to get over the ball at the breakdown is one he performed at will.
If Jonah Lomu is the most influential player, ripping through the old ways as the sport was turning professional, Carter represented the consolidation of that revolution. New Zealand already adored him and the way he looked on a billboard in a pair of boxers, when he announced himself to the world in 2005 with, again, surely the most complete individual performance of all time.
On 2 July 2005 in Wellington, he scored 33 points in the second Test against the British & Irish Lions in the biggest defeat the tourists have ever suffered, 48-18. The next day, Roger Federer dismantled Andy Roddick to win his third Wimbledon and fifth grand slam title. Both men were 23. Both were widely hailed, even then, as the greatest ever in their sports.
The following Sunday in a feature on the Carter phenomenon, the Observer noted: “That kind of accolade is normally bestowed upon a sportsman a good few years after retirement by seasoned hacks remembering the good old days.” This seemed different.
Indeed it was. Federer is still at it, accumulating accolades with a class unsurpassed in his sport’s history. Carter’s career would follow a similar curve.
Which is not to say it was smooth. Two years later, at the 2007 World Cup, the All Blacks were by such a distance the best team in the world they did not imagine they could lose. Then followed the most extraordinary implosion over 40 minutes against France in the quarter-final. Carter, tellingly, left the field injured. The All Blacks unravelled.
Four years later, in a home World Cup, he was lost to injury again during the pool stages. This time New Zealand prevailed without him, but the agony of missing out was acute. Even his nation’s joy at finally claiming their dues seemed compromised by his absence. And so in 2015, when he hoisted that trophy in London, in his last Test match, there was a feeling that a kink in the cosmos had been ironed out.
Five years on, and he played his last game for his home town club, Southbridge, in the Canterbury wilderness – a man who had seen the world, touched the heights and returned home, that easy smile and soft voice no doubt unchanged from when he had set off a couple of decades earlier. If we are looking for a measure of greatness, there it is.
Add it to all the others. What a joy to have witnessed them.
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