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There is no sense the All Blacks are about to be exposed. There is no wondering whether the plan will fall apart or be vastly different without their first choice playmaker on the park.
It’s not like in Carter’s heyday when it was a national emergency — think of the 2011 World Cup — if he was injured.
Since 2012 the All Blacks have had genuine depth at first- five. Far from being a position of weakness, it has become an area of incredible strength.
Between 2012 and 2015 Aaron Cruden and Barrett developed quickly and beyond expectation — a situation forced by Carter’s continual injury troubles. Colin Slade also played high quality rugby and the All Blacks effectively had four genuine options at No 10 by 2014. It’s not so different now. Barrett i s the clear No 1, but Sopoaga is a quality player who has shown himself to be of genuine test quality.
By this time next year, assuming he enjoys a season at No 10 for the Chiefs, Damian McKenzie will be another option, while Richie Mo’unga, called up this week as injury cover, steered the Crusaders to a Super Rugby title and has a test future. So what has changed? “I think when you look at the 10s, sometimes when you have got a Dan Carter at the top of the tree people look at all the others and think there is a big void there,” says All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster. “But often once you take someone away and give other people an opportunity, they come through. I think we saw that clearly with Crudes and Beauden and by giving them the opportunity to experience test match rugby, they got a lot of gains out of that.
“I think we are also getting guys into Super Rugby generally a couple of years earlier than we used to. And it is a demanding championship where they have got to learn game management and to a certain degree we are seeing the reward of that.
“I guess the other thing that I like is that is that we are seeing a few players taking their time. No 10 often takes time and we see a lot of young talented 10s come in young, set the world on fire but once people figure out that they can stop their natural running game or whatever it is, they force the 10 to become more of a strategic manager, that is when some players in the past have fallen over.
“We are probably getting a little bit better at working through that. If you look at the likes of Lima who has