Nick Evans
T he f ormer All Blacks f ly- half who is now Harlequins at t ack and backs coach
MY FIRST year playing Super Rugby was for the Highlanders in 2004 – I was a late bloomer so didn’t get into professional rugby until I was 21. I played against Dan Carter that year and saw first-hand what he was capable of. Even in those early games when he was playing 12, before he moved to ten, you could see he was one of those guys who has time – time to see pictures and time to make decisions, and he’d generally make good decisions. He just had this feel for the game – natural depth perception, vision.
What sets apart great players from good players is how they perform under pressure. There’s external pressure and internal pressure, but when those championship moments come it’s that ability to still have time; it’s all about the process and understanding what’s happening in that moment. Even at that early juncture when I first played against him or our first All Blacks tour together in 2005, you could see he had that.
As a fly-half, when things go wrong or aren’t quite going to plan, the team look to you and that can either be a burden or a challenge. For him, that was a great challenge. And he had an all-round game. Skill-wise, he had a good passing game, a good kicking game and his goalkicking set him apart – he was a very good goalkicker. He was also of a similar ilk to Jonny Wilkinson in that he was a brave defender. You don’t see too
“There’s definitely a case
for Carter as the GOAT”
many tens, including myself, doing that, but when a ten is making good tackles and stopping people in defence it gives a team massive confidence.
The second Test of the 2005 Lions series is the obvious one in terms of his best game. One that stands out for me was Highlanders v Crusaders in 2007 at Carisbrook. It was a really windy day and he just put the ball in the right areas and kept changing the momentum. When they got the ball under pressure, he transferred that pressure back to us through his kicking game and his ability to manipulate defences, and the game got away from us. Then he put over that banana kick conversion – to pull something like that out was ridiculous!
With the All Blacks, we were vying for the same position and my mentality was that I wanted his jersey. He set the benchmark pretty high, so that forced me to look at my preparation, how I trained, how many extras I was doing… I’m a driven person and want to be the best I can be, and there’s no doubt you have to raise your game to get to that level. It made me play better and I probably exceeded where I thought I could get to.
I definitely wanted the No 10 jersey but once the team was selected, it was my role to back him up and prepare as best as I could to help the team win, so I could come off the bench and the team wouldn’t miss a beat. We’d share ideas and work together to break down South Africa, Australia or northern hemisphere teams if we were on tour. It’s all about the greater good of winning in the black jersey.
Is Carter the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT)? In an individual sport like golf, you could say Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods – half of people would be on one side and half on the other.
But it’s hard in a team sport because there are a lot of variables.
I think if you set out criteria to satisfy – say points, titles, consistency of performance – and compared other tens in the world, there’s definitely a case for him as the GOAT. But if you’re looking at impact on rugby and the world, then you’re comparing him to Jonah Lomu, who changed the game with professionalism, and that for me is a different argument. How many people would have come through if Lomu hadn’t played the game? Everyone sat and watched him when he played.
Don’t get me wrong, Carter has had an unbelievable influence on rugby, but the world stopped when Lomu played.