When Dan Carter was the perfect 10

All Blacks great Dan Carter has never watched a full replay of his ‘perfect’ test match against the British and Irish Lions.

Fifteen years on from that magical night in Wellington in 2005, the 112-test legend still hasn’t fully indulged in his first five-eighth masterclass, which sealed the hosts a crushing 48-18 win, and a series victory.

Speaking to the UK’s Sky Sports’ Rugby Retro, the 38-year-old revealed that despite his 33-point haul being life-changing, he is still to actually get round to reliving the full 80 minutes, and bashfully felt he hogged the ball that night, in a display which is still considered the most dominant individual performance in the modern game.

‘‘I haven’t watched it from start to finish,’’ Carter said. ‘‘I’ve seen highlights that pop up everywhere. I was watching some highlights of the game, and all I could think was how greedy I was, I can’t believe how little I passed in that game, it was embarrassing.

‘‘Who knows? Maybe there’ll be some of these games relived leading into the next Lions series in South Africa, I might sit down with a nice glass of red wine and drag my three sons to watch their old man and see what he used to be able to do.’’

Even more remarkable about Carter’s performance was that it came in just his 19th test, and only his sixth start in the No 10 jersey.

He said that having been thrust into a leadership role in the team the year before, he was highly motivated to prove his worth to the coaches who had selected him for that end of year tour ahead of ‘‘a couple of icons of the

‘‘I might sit down with a nice glass of red wine and drag my three sons to watch their old man and see what he used to be able to do.’’

Dan Carter

game’’ in Andrew Mehrtens and Carlos Spencer.

But it was to be Carter who would immediately become a rugby icon himself, thanks to one sublime display, featuring two tries, four conversions and five penalties.

‘‘You’ll never say that you’ve played the perfect game . . . but that was as close as I got,’’ Carter told Sky Sports’ Rugby Retro.

‘‘I was a bit naı¨ve to how big a Lions series was and [while] people were starting to recognise me around New Zealand, all of a sudden it became a bit more from different parts of the world, ‘OK who is this Dan Carter guy?’

‘‘I went to the changing room, and the boys were celebrating. I always sit next to Ma’a Nonu, and we have a joke after each test match about how many text messages you receive. Ma’a would probably get 25 or 30 texts, and I’d probably get about the same.

‘‘But all of a sudden, I turned on my phone, he was sitting next to me and he was gutted – my phone was just going ‘ding, ding, ding’, all these messages came through, and I clocked up probably over 100 messages of congratulations, and that was another insight of ‘OK, this game was pretty special’.’’