Paul Lewis: Scrum welcomes back favourite

It's raining but Daniel Carter has a bit of a sweat on.

The poor bloke has to field obligatory underwear questions - see, fame always comes at a price - at a time when the Jockeys must be feeling a bit schlocky.

There's a media ruck at his management group's offices in Parnell. All the heat from the assembled bodies in Auckland's muggy weather seems to concentrate in the small room and, never mind Carter's undies, everyone else's must be suffering a bit from the prickly heat.

James McOnie from Prime TV, and formerly the Herald on Sunday, is there dressed in a full Chiefs tracksuit and other garments and you don't want to think about his underpants.

I mean, you don't like to inquire after anyone's underwear, really, but Carter has forever stitched himself into New Zealand folklore and has been responsible for burgeoning newspaper and magazine sales whenever such beefcake is displayed.

Consequently newsrooms up and down the country flock to see him whenever he is available and the topics of conversation range from underwear to rugby to business interests and whether he mastered French (he didn't but is a lot better than he used to be).

He's been back in New Zealand a day and is there to signal that he's back for real after his ill-fated jaunt to Perpignan, where he played five games before rupturing his Achilles tendon - an injury which meant he reaped approximately €140,000 ($306,500) per game for his 'sabbatical' a la Perpignan.

He looks a bit embarrassed about it all, saying he felt he had let the Perpignan team down but he had become involved again at training, helping the goalkickers and such like. It's clear what troubled him most was letting the side down.

He's such a genuine guy, you find it hard to hold anything against Carter. He interviews wearing an 'aw, shucks' smile and talks in such a down-home way, it is some time before you realise this is a man skilled in the art of not saying very much at all.

The real reason we are all there is that there is, yet again, a persistent rumour that Carter is coming to Auckland to play for the Blues.

This rumour has done the rounds more times than the old, fake one about legendary golfer Arnold Palmer's wife telling Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show that she always kissed Arnie's balls for luck before a tournament.

There seems to be some truth to this one - Carter, that is ... (see story, p73). Carter pleasantly bats off media inquiries and, when asked directly if he has decided for whom he will be playing provincial and Super 14 rugby, he says: "I haven't even talked to my management company yet", which is a clever way of saying "no comment" without the "no smoke without fire" element that "no comment" contains.

He's an engaging speaker and, when he moves on to a topic of concern, the dark eyes cloud and they are directed towards the carpet as he tries to be genuine without giving too much away; looking up from under his lashes like Princess Di used to do.

No wonder most of the women in this country want to talk to him, hug him or at the very least handwash those Jockeys.

It's then that you realise that it is good to have him back. He's a world-class player and, think back to the test match last night, there weren't a great many of those on view.

Some in the media and in radio talkbackland have criticised the one-rule-for-Carter-another-rule-for-everyone-else aspect of his journey to Perpignan.

But New Zealand rugby has so little to fight back with against European wealth. It is hardly Graham Henry's fault that so many of his top players have decided to stay in Europe, fondling their euros and pretending it's the lifestyle they love - though when Carter talks about loving the ability to be anonymous, it's believable.

He confesses to being nervous about the media ruck - "I haven't done one of these for a while" - and laughs about getting a bit sweaty with the tension.

Even the cynical media are anxious to get close to him; reporters prefix or suffix questions with 'Dan', as if they simply have to use his name; they hang on the answers and nod and grin inanely and, afterwards, there is the fan-speak that you don't expect from the press corps. You know - isn't he small; how does he shrug off those tackles from much bigger blokes?

But rugby in New Zealand is in about the same shape as Carter's Achilles. Anything that can be done to retain such players has my vote.

Rugby's global bosses are doing what seems to be their level best to send their game to that far-off place where rest extinct species like the dodo, the sabre-toothed tiger, Auckland's trams and, indeed, any hint that Auckland's transport planners have a strategy other than building more roads which end in bottlenecks, thus achieving the formidable outcome of spending squillions to relocate traffic jams.

Rugby has only itself to blame; that much is clear. Sanzar's inability to wean itself from the honeyed teat of Rupert Murdoch meant its solution to growing disenchantment with the Super 14 was to create more of the same - a Super 15; its roots based in what makes the broadcasters happy, not the fans.

It will break in the middle to allow the June test window - that which we are now experiencing - to continue the swiftly-forgotten visits of poor Northern Hemisphere teams. So having players like Carter and Luke McAlister back will be a breath of fresh air.

Those who quibbled about McAlister's fast-track return should be subject to that fine old French insult - vous avez le cervau d'un sandwich au fromage (you have the brain of a cheese sandwich).

Sabbaticals and fast-track returns are among the few weapons at Henry's disposal to combat the big bucks and entrenched attitudes of the north. As far as I am concerned, he can smuggle them all back here in containers, disguised as pregnant Lithuanian women.

Select the best and then play them consistently. That's what the fans want. So far, Henry seems to be doing that with what he has.