Carr could justify a place in rugby’s bible

Brad Carr of Feilding just about merits his own chapter in the Rugby Almanack. The Yellows winger is en route to his fourth century of games for his club, a mammoth effort for someone who started as a 17-year-old in 1999.

He plays his remarkable 350th on Saturday against Freyberg to open the season.

Other players around the country will have played 25 seasons, but not all in senior rugby.

Many of his team-mates weren’t born when Carr was making his debut. Now he’s 40 and last Saturday galloped in for two tries against Napier Pirates.

He brought up 300 in 2017 against Te Kawau and yet every 50 games he has confided in us that his body is packing up. It’s prime enough for him to work as the caretaker at Feilding Intermediate School which he once attended.

Carr has become a fixture in club rugby.

When subbed off or binned, it was never long until he lit up a ciggy, a firestarter.

Last season it seemed time might be catching up with him until the Hankins Shield final under gloomy Covid lights at the Arena, he was Feilding’s dangerman on the right wing.

When he was subbed off suddenly Varsity began attacking dangerously up what had been his channel. He saw more ball in that final than he had all season and that helped entice him back.

Carr took 20 years to win a Hankins Shield and in four finals has now won two in a row.

In pride of place in his software is having tackled Jonah Lomu three times in a practice match for Manawatu¯ against the All Blacks at the Rugby Institute.

Meanwhile, back to the just published 2021 Rugby Almanack. It’s hard to deny Ash Dixon a place on the reserve bench of the Almanack’s latest XV.

All right, hewasn’t the best hooker in the country last season; not even the third best.

Dane Coles and Codie Taylor would surpass him, even if hookers these days are misnamed because they never hook the ball.

But Dixon’s selection, as an inspirational leader of Hawke’s Bay, NZ Maori and co-captain of the Highlanders, was well merited, the type of player who, if wearing green, would have led Manawatu¯ off the bottom rung last year.

The Almanack’s trio of authors also justified his canonisation because he topped the provincial try count with 15, despite most were from cuddling the ball at the back of rolling mauls, something rugby would do well to purge.

Stored somewhere in a loft are my father’s Almanacks dating back to the first in 1935.

Since then it became customary for Arthur Carman and Arthur Swan to rock the boat by inserting an outsider in their XV, if only to poke a nostril at the All Blacks’ selectors.

Indeed Carman named another hooker, North Auckland’s Frank Colthurst, eight times, but to no avail, although he was an All Black reserve in 1965 which today would have meant a few minutes as a sub and All Black sainthood. He is back in the Almanack this time, in the obituaries section.

He died in Whangarei at the age of 81 a year ago.

The authors could have taken another selectorial poke by picking Taranaki super-fetcher Lachlan Boshier on one of the flanks.

Dave Rennie, no less, was mystified that the All Blacks did not invite Boshier to Australia.

The Almanack might have shunted Jack Goodhue who keeps being shoe-horned into the No 12 jersey when he is a centre. Manawatu¯ites would say their favourite No 12,

Ngani Laumape, was wasted in Australia, used once as a sub and given one start.

Sam Cane adorns the Almanack cover after adjudicators did their duty by NZ Rugby and named him player of the year when clearly that was Aaron Smith.

It must be pointed out that the authors are not accorded freedom of speech. Had they written that the All Blacks’ expedition to Australia after a dud draw with the Wallabies in Wellington was a load of cobblers and that the jury is still hung regarding coach Ian Foster, such blasphemy would have been swiftly excised by NZ Rugby censors.

NZ Rugby subsidises the Almanack and so the writers must stick to stats, not vilify the ABS for their humiliating result against Argentina. Given the awful intrusion of the Sino pathogen, it was a sterling effort by the editors and Upstart Press in Takapuna to produce the Almanack because publication wasn’t confirmed until November.

The rest of rugby’s holy testament is as complete and factual as ever.

Even the Heartland unions get their allocations despite playing only friendlies. Manawatu¯’s Turbos are correctly described as ‘‘being outclassed by stronger, faster teams laden with Super experience’’ as well as stung by the absence of Laumape and Otere Black.