Dan Carter poised to make return against Scotland

DAN Carter appears poised to make his first All Blacks appearance against top-flight opposition in almost 12 months when the world champions play Scotland at BT Murrayfield on Saturday.
Carter has only featured once for the All Blacks in almost a year. Picture: GettyCarter has only featured once for the All Blacks in almost a year. Picture: Getty
Carter has only featured once for the All Blacks in almost a year. Picture: Getty

The 32-year-old stand-off – who was IRB World Player of the Year in both 2005 and 2012 – has played only one match for the All Blacks since being injured after 26 minutes of his centenary Test against England at Twickenham last November.

International rugby’s all-time leading point scorer missed the entirety of this year’s Rugby Championship campaign after fracturing his leg in the Super Rugby final at the start of July, yet he was selected for the All Blacks’ end of season tour, despite the fact that his comeback trail constituted just 40 minutes of competitive action at NPC level.

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Carter made an appearance as a second-half replacement in Chicago a fortnight ago, in what was effectively an exhibition match against a USA side who were ranked a lowly 18th in the IRB world rankings at the time. The All Blacks strolled to a 74-6 victory in that encounter.

So it was not a major surprise when head coach Steven Hansen decided that this wasn’t sufficient preparation for the rather more challenging task of taking on England at Twickenham last weekend and left his star playmaker out the match-day 23 for that game.

The All Blacks won 24-21 in his absence, but Ian Forster – the All Black assistant coach – has now dropped a major hint that the time might be right for Carter to start testing himself again at the sharp end of international rugby.

Foster was initially evasive when asked to comment on the prospect of Carter playing against Scotland, pointing out that the team is not due to be announced until tomorrow.

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But he then added that: “I think we’ve stated before that we are keen for Dan to get significant game time on this tour, so whether he’s starting or off the bench, he’s likely to be there in some form.

“For him, he’s got to just carry on doing what he’s doing. He took some good steps in Chicago and I think he got a lot of confidence out of getting back on the park and getting used to the systems. It’s clearly going to be a pretty significant step up from that, so it’s just getting timing, getting used to the speed of the defence coming at you and still getting the focus to give yourself a chance to make the right decisions.”

Foster added that he had been impressed by the way Scotland attacked Argentina last weekend, and said that his team will be wary of the threat posed by a backline dominated by Glasgow Warriors players.

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“I think they certainly showed the benefits of that combination. It doesn’t always work out like that when you transition from club to internationals, so clearly they’ve done a good job in how they prepared their group last week and they’ll be pleased with the result,” he stated.

“They showed a desire to play and are obviously feeling pretty good about that, so I guess what it has done is raise the bar a little bit with us about the challenges which will come on Saturday.

“Vern Cotter was at Bay of Plenty during my Waikato days and he did a great job over there. They always used to play a tough, physical game but he gave them the licence to try things as well. So I see similarities in some aspects of what they are doing, but he’s obviously got a new set of players and he’s trying to set the mould for the Scottish group that he’s got, and they’ve got off to a pretty good start. We certainly don’t see them as a second-tier nation.”

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