Rugby: Time for Carter to step up

Resident No10 did little to answer Sopoaga’s challenge

Dan Carter did little to ease the debate over the All Blacks' best first-five in the defeat to the Wallabies in Sydney.

The stats show he ran only twice with the ball - every other starting All Black apart from Tony Woodcock carried more than him - and there were a few missed tackles along with two missed kicks at goal and a couple of short kick-offs.

The resulting criticism wasn't surprising to assistant coach Ian Foster, who said Carter was operating behind a pack struggling to make its presence felt, plus players alongside him had cluttered minds.

In looking at the bigger picture of what is to come next month in terms of the start of the All Blacks World Cup defence, the coaches have overloaded the players with information and that was partly to blame for the frantic, mistake-ridden performance at ANZ Stadium, Foster said.

Simpler messages could help ahead of the Bledisloe Cup decider at Eden Park, but there is no doubt, too, that the coaches would like the 33-year-old Carter to ease the pressure on the midfield by running the ball more.

"Our whole game was off-beat," Foster said. "We got a lot of slow ball and it really created a lot of indecision, I guess, as to how we played. It always comes down on the 9s and 10s when the game goes like that and people start to point the fingers.

"I thought he did some good things in Sydney and there are some areas where he probably was missing a beat and he knows he has to lift in those areas. But again, he's going to lift once this team is more sure about what it's doing on the park."

Lima Sopoaga's electric running on debut in Johannesburg must have given the selectors food for thought because it's something we haven't seen in Carter for a long time. Relegated to second-five outside Colin Slade for much of the year at the Crusaders, Carter was solid at No10 in Apia against Manu Samoa and again in Christchurch against Argentina.

Carter missed the trip to South Africa and failed to respond to Sopoaga's challenge in Sydney, but has built up so much credit in playing 105 tests and scoring 1500 points (the first man to do so), that the selectors are unlikely to lose faith in the near future.

"Sydney was a bit of a judder bar, wasn't it?" Foster said. "I thought early on we did a lot of good stuff and created some really good opportunities, yet we weren't clinical enough to take them and we've focused hard on that. He [Carter] was a critical part of creating those opportunities but once we got pressured and struggled to get a flow on, his game subsequently probably struggled a bit.

"We saw some really busy minds.

"To be honest, while we hate going through that pain it was good that we were exposed in that area because it identified that some of our communication isn't as clear as what it needs to be."