Retirement was knocking at his door for years but Rugby World Cup winner Dan Carter refused to give in to it. The pandemic then forced his hand, as he writes in this extract from his new book, The Art of Winning.
At a time when many people are contemplating the next step in their career, working hard towards achieving their goals, those of us in sport are contemplating the end. Will it be a career-ending injury? The dreaded tap on the shoulder from the coach? Or will we get to choose the manner of our departure? Everyone wants a fairy-tale ending: only a privileged few achieve it.
I first thought seriously about retirement in 2013, at the age of 31. Suffering from constant injuries, I felt that my body was giving up on me, no longer able to cope with the demands of professional rugby. But retirement was a dirty word to me, conjuring up the kind of images no one needs in their head: Washed up. Has-been. No good anymore. I dreaded retirement, feared it, avoided it at all costs.
So I found a way back. I became one of the privileged few.
In 2015, the All Blacks team I’d been a part of for more than 12 years won the Rugby World Cup, and I had one of the best games I’d ever played in the black jersey. I got my fairy-tale ending.
Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were criticised by some before winning the 2015 World Cup. Photo / Brett Phibbs
My international career had ended, but I didn’t want to finish playing. Like anyone who devotes themselves completely to a discipline and becomes hooked on the buzz that success brings, I couldn’t imagine a life without rugby, and I had other things I wanted to achieve in the game.
Over the course of the next five years, there were plenty of times when I thought I should retire - but that fear of retirement, that worry about what came next drove me to come back ever stronger. After all, what was the alternative? Washed up. Has-been. No good anymore.
In 2015 I went to play in France, for Racing 92, where we had some incredible success, winning the Top 14, France’s domestic championship, in my first season and evolving the culture of the club. But the spectre of retirement was never far away: I suffered a serious injury in my third and final season with Racing 92, at the age of 36. Was it time to go?
No amount of physical pain could match the depths of my dread about retirement. I knew I could do the rehab because I’d done it so many times before; I didn’t have that same certainty about life after rugby. So I went through a brutal rehab regime and came back.
When I returned, I’d lost my place in the team and had to settle for a spot on the bench. But I learned to adapt to a new role within the squad rather than face up to the writing on the wall. And then I joined Kobe Steelers in Japan, on what I knew would be my final contract, where I was reunited with my coach and mentor Wayne Smith. We won the Japanese Top League in my first season, and I felt I was playing great rugby again.
By now I knew the inevitable was just around the corner, and it was all about finishing on my terms. So when the opportunity to return to France as an injury replacement came up, I jumped at the chance. Any excuse to continue playing. And when I failed the medical and learned I needed surgery on my neck, my immediate thought was, “it’s time to give up”. It was a thought shared by the people closest to me. “What have you got left to prove?” they asked.
Dan Carter ended up playing several money-spinning seasons in Japan. Photo / Photosport
I was determined to have an even better year than my first. To finish on a high.
Then the pandemic struck.
Breaking the news
When the decision was eventually taken to cancel the Japanese Top League season, I was distraught. In that moment, I lost all perspective. I didn’t think about the bigger picture - the people going through much worse around the world, my privileged position to be insulated from the worst of it with my family in New Zealand. I’d lost my head and all I could think was that I wasn’t going to be able to finish on my own terms. I was in a state of red - angry, confused, unable to take it in.
I stormed into my boys’ bedroom, and my son Fox, 5 at the time, who is a sensitive soul and has a huge heart, knew immediately that something was up.
I was expecting him to say, “Ah, that sucks, hard luck.” But instead a smile broke out across his face. “That’s the best news I’ve ever heard,” he said, and gave me a huge hug.
Suddenly, everything was put into perspective for me. Hearing this from my son, a 5-year-old whose only take is that he gets to have his dad around again, crystallised the thoughts that had been swirling around my head for years now. When is the right time to go? I was an aging athlete who had achieved everything I’d wanted to in the game. What exactly were my reasons for wanting to continue playing?
I thought back to myself at the same age, falling in love with the game during the inaugural Rugby World Cup. And I thought to my place now, to have spent so many years pursuing my goal to be the best player in the world. First to training, last to leave: if you want to be the best you have to do these things. But how do you reconcile that with trying to be the best parent you can be too? You have to be around, for starters.
I found the decision to retire so difficult, despite all my success, that it took an unprecedented set of global circumstances and the unvarnished truth from a 5-year-old boy to make me see that I was finding any excuse to keep playing to avoid retirement. But there was nowhere to hide anymore, and over the course of that year I came to accept that my days as a professional rugby player were over.
I’m prone to introspection. Time without purpose is dangerous for me. I’d worked with some of the top mental skills coaches in the world, but always on the pursuit of greatness in the rugby environment: never on the small matter of what I was planning on doing with the rest of my life after rugby. I hadn’t had this much time to think since the injury layoffs I’d experienced during my career, when it becomes a daily battle to put the dark thoughts to one side, to stop yourself becoming overwhelmed by the enormity of the road ahead and simply focus on the process. Do the next thing. Then the next thing.
But at least with injuries there was always a destination, a goal I was working towards. With retirement there was nothing but the long road ahead, and I had no idea where it was leading. I wasn’t even 38 yet. If I’m not Dan Carter, rugby player, then who am I?
Throughout my playing career I’d always known what my purpose was. When I got out of bed each day I was striving to improve upon the player I was yesterday, to be the best rugby player in the world. It meant setting relentless standards for myself. And it also demanded great sacrifice: at times putting my career and my pursuit of excellence first, and my family second.
That feels like quite a shocking thing to write, especially as a dedicated family man and father to four, but it’s a truth that anyone who has walked the road in pursuit of high performance will know. Alongside this purpose, I had everything structured: training, meetings, nutrition, exercise, travel, doctors and health and wellbeing staff from across the spectrum, all laid on for me. I had teammates and camaraderie, coaches who challenged me and supported me. My years were a packed calendar repurposing of matches and tournaments. Even my time off was scheduled, monitored, structured.
And then it all just stops.
Finding purpose
I know I’m in a fortunate position to have had a long and successful career, to be in good health and not face the financial and physical troubles many players face upon retirement.
But it is still a huge social adjustment to make to my perceived “normal” life - similar to what I imagine those in the armed forces make when they retire from service. And, if I’m honest, I have to say I struggled with it.
And then there was the anxiety, the self-doubt. I’d dabbled in business during my sports career, but if that was where I saw a future, where would I fit in? I never went to university, and a part of me had always thought, “I don’t deserve to be in these important business meetings. I’m not smart enough. My input doesn’t matter because I’m just a rugby player.”
I knew I had to get some help to deal with this transition in my life. I was in the privileged position of being able to call upon a lot of great people to talk to - including many former teammates who had gone through the same transition, and some former sportspeople who had gone on to have great success in their second careers. Perhaps the most important connection I made during this time was with Kevin Roberts, a former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi who does a lot of consultancy work with top sports teams and players, including the All Blacks in the past.
Kevin had a process that could be of great value to me. He told me: “It will be confrontational, hard work and challenging. Are you going to commit to this?”
“You’re damn right,” I replied. “I’m all in.”
And so began a process that is still ongoing in my life, a process that has forced me to look inwardly in a way I’ve never had to before, that has proven challenging, frustrating, rewarding and left me full of gratitude. It’s a process that I’ve given name to for this part of my life: I’m not in retirement. I’m in the process of repurposing.
Through this process of repurposing, firstly through Kevin’s help and then with that of others and on my own, I have tried to establish my own set of beliefs and values, looking back through my life so far and finding what really resonated with me. In particular, I looked back at my career in rugby and asked myself, “What exactly is it that you love about this game and want to take into the next chapter of your life?”
There was the strong work ethic, of course - players love getting their hands dirty. The teamwork, team ethos - I wouldn’t want to be a player in an individual sport - the idea of no individual being bigger than the team. I loved the value of always wanting to give back to the game: grassroots rugby, repurposing community rugby, youth rugby. The idea of never forgetting where you came from. It’s why I love going back to my hometown of Southbridge.
Then there was the spirit of rugby: to go to war for 80 minutes and build friendships after - some of my best friends now are opponents from my playing days. That’s because of the respect. No egos, just respect for your teammates, opponents, fans and refs. And I loved the social diversity: the fact that everyone can play the game - different shapes, sizes, religions; boys and girls, old and young.
Lewis Hamilton (right) with Dan and Honor Carter at the Louis Vuitton menswear show in Paris in November last year. Picture / Twitter
I began to realise that my anxieties about my education existed only in my mind. I had an education of another kind to draw upon, as part of the unbelievable culture of excellence in the All Blacks. I’d experienced the thrill of winning the World Cup and playing a test match back in 2005 against the Lions that people still talk about to this day, but I’d also tasted the kind of defeat that never quite leaves you, suffered with injuries and made regrettable mistakes off the field. I’d executed skills and held my nerve in high-pressure situations in front of thousands of spectators in stadiums, with millions more watching at home on TV. I’d developed from being a naïve, quiet kid at the start of my career to taking on one of the key leadership positions in the team. I’d grown and evolved. I’d fought back from setbacks, becoming incredibly resilient in the process.
My experiences held value not only in rugby, but beyond. My confidence grew when organisations like AstraZeneca, who were trying to develop a Covid vaccine at the time, and a team at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, part of the University of Oxford, wanted to hear my thoughts on managing pressure. I also spoke in Paris with the general managers of Louis Vuitton, at the invitation of their CEO, Michael Burke, about the importance of humility in a team environment.
And then when organisations like the Oxford Foundry asked me to get involved in helping to mentor their next generation of leaders, when people showed interest in learning about the kind of resilience I’d built up through coming back from setbacks in my career, I felt certain that I had something to offer after all.
