John Roughan: Here's hoping we can raise a Cup to Carter

If the last World Cup belonged to Richie McCaw above all, this one deserves to be Carter's. Photo / Richard Robinson

Whenever I remember Dan Carter I will see that tackle he took from Bismarck du Plessis at Eden Park two years ago. He never saw it coming.

Watching the Springbok flying at him from about 20m as Carter prepared to kick, the missile in his blind spot, was one of the most sickening things I have seen on a rugby field. Not as bad as the way Brian O'Driscoll was taken out of the Lions tour in 2005 but still, pretty bad.

Carter was flattened. He left the field with a shoulder injury and never really came back, until two weeks ago. Through last year and this domestic season he was a shadow of himself, looking perpetually worried and lethargic, as though he no longer wanted to be playing rugby.

It happens. Great players are sometimes never the same after injury. Michael Jones moved to the blind side after his knee. Canterbury shunted Carter out to second five in the Super 15 and the All Black selectors didn't seem to know what to do with him. They had younger first fives playing well; Carter appeared to be there as a mentor more than anything.

When the World Cup squad was announced, I suffered a tremor that it might turn out Steve Hansen had not been courageous enough. It would have been hard to leave Carter out of this World Cup after the injury that took him out of the last one. But if we failed this time, might it be said that Hansen persisted too long with great players who were past it?

Not now, whatever happens tomorrow. You don't get to a final with players who are past it. Carter has come back.

He may not be the cool field commander he was in his prime. The play doesn't seem to wait for his decisions as it used to do. But the confidence is back and it is a delight to see his eyes alight with relief.

It is as though he intended to pick up exactly where he left off last time, injured at the end of pool play. He had a leading hand in the scintillating quarter-final two weeks ago and took control of that hard semi against the Springboks last weekend. His dropped goal was a match-winner and may have been a cup-winner if it turns out the All Blacks have already passed their toughest test.

If the last World Cup belonged to Richie McCaw above all, this one deserves to be Carter's. No matter what happens tomorrow it has been a privilege to be alive to see him play. He is easily the most complete first five of our time. Only Andrew Mehrtens was in the same street.

Artists do not know where their touch comes from, or why it deserts them at times and whether it will ever come back. The joy on Carter's face this week says he doesn't know why but it has come back just in time to give him the swan song of his dreams.

One more big game of rugby. What must it feel like, not only for Carter but for McCaw, Ma'a Nonu, Kevin Mealamu and Conrad Smith? It must be a little frightening to be stepping down from the heady heights. What do you do with the rest of your life? But the prospect of not bashing your body around any more, not with the same intensity anyway, must be welcome.

Carter has a book ready to be published as soon as the climax can be written tomorrow. I wonder whether he will admit to any psychological wounds from that tackle in 2013. It has not been mentioned in the reviews of his career I have read recently. Our rugby writers saw nothing wrong with the tackle at the time. They were outraged that referee Romaine Poite put du Plessis in the sin bin for it. The International Rugby Board's review came to the same conclusion. It was "an unfortunate case of human error by the match officials," said the IRB, adding that the poor officials "having reviewed the match, fully recognise and accept that they made a mistake in the application of the law."

Rugby is hard to love sometimes. Penalties and yellow cards are issued for innocuous technicalities. Refereeing it well requires a fine art of knowing what matters. Dangerous play matters whatever the rules say.

Dan Carter's career could have ended the day he was blind-sided by a human express train. It wasn't a late tackle, wasn't a shoulder charge, it was just brutal.

What is in a man's mind, I wonder, when he is about to barrell into someone of slighter build who hasn't seen him? Carter might have given up the game in disgust were it not for the hope of tomorrow.