Tom English at the World Cup: Weight of All Black hopes hanging heavy on Slade

WE HAVE seen the strange phenomenon of a nation collectively running around with its hair on fire in the hours since Dan Carter was ruled out of the World Cup with a groin injury.

A fatalistic attitude gripped this land. Maybe it won’t last long. Perhaps by tomorrow New Zealand will have regrouped after the torment of Carter’s exit and, maybe, the confidence of before will have returned as strong as it ever was, but you have to wonder what damage will have been done by then – to Colin Slade, the new main man at 10.

Since Sunday, there has been understandable, and profound, sympathy for Carter but it has been mixed with a well-aired dread of Slade taking his place for the big games to come. If Slade has happened to switch on a television, turn on a radio or pick up a newspaper in the last two days then he would not have been able to avoid mention after mention of why he isn’t fit to lace the boots of the great Carter and why Graham Henry would be better off giving the job to the scrum-half, Piri Weepu.

Had he tuned in to the stuff, Slade would have been beaten over the head with talk of his own inadequacies. He’s only 23 years old and has less than half a dozen starts in international rugby and he is going to have to be one heck of a player and one very strong character to thrive amid the negativity that is swirling around him at the moment.

You’d think he was a dud. By comparison with Carter, he probably is. Slade is never going to be able to do the things that Carter can do, never going to be taken to the heart of the nation as the great DC has been and it’s doubtful that he’s going to have an underwear company paying him a fortune to put a 50ft poster of him in his jocks on the side of an Auckland building as they have done with Carter, but he’s not incompetent, not the lightweight that has been spoken about during this state of national emergency since Carter bowed out.

Monday’s edition of the respected New Zealand Herald was pretty typical of the coverage. In their player ratings of the All Blacks’ game against Canada they gave Slade the lowest mark of any of the Kiwi players, a 4.5 out of 10 with the accompanying comment: “It took all of 48 seconds for any hopes that Slade was up to the job to evaporate.”

This kind of stuff is everywhere. There’s been a revisiting of Slade’s previous Tests, the poor display against South Africa in the Tri-Nations in August, the jumpy performance against the Japanese in the World Cup, where he missed three out of his first four shots at goal, committed bad handling errors and threw a pass that led to an intercept try and, most recently, that 4.5 showing against Canada, featuring a charged-down kick that helped give the minnows a three-point lead, a fluffed punt, a misdirected pass that almost brought another intercept try and the fact that he only converted three of his first eight shots at goal.

“Rather than owing his place to careful planning, Slade just happened to be on the merry-go-round when the World Cup tournament was on,” wrote the columnist, Chris Rattue, in Monday’s NZ Herald. “He may never be seen again, for all we know.”

There’s been a wailing and a gnashing of teeth about Henry’s lack of an experienced Plan B in the case of an injury to Carter. Where was Luke McAlister and Leon MacDonald? How about Nick Evans and Stephen Donald? Henry spent a lot of time on Donald, gave him plenty of caps and then cut him loose and brought Slade into the fold instead of him. Only he hasn’t given Slade enough game-time, hasn’t afforded him the chance to cut his teeth in the Test arena in case of a worst-case scenario, which has now duly happened. “Slade is woefully under-prepared and probably not truly good enough for this,” wrote Rattue, a sentiment that is shared by many seasoned observers of the All Blacks scene.

Carter’s first public appearance since tearing his groin was always likely to be a circus, a riot of cameras and microphones and question upon question, delivered in rapid-fire and all basically amounting to the same thing: “How does it feel, Dan?”

Rarely in rugby has one man answered the same query in so many different ways to so many different people. But, then again, rarely in rugby has there been such a collective and nationwide swoon at a single turn of events. By the end of the 13 and a half minutes of his press conference you began to wonder what was more painful to the great fly-half – the torn groin that has destroyed his World Cup or the inquisition on the first floor of New Zealand’s team hotel in Takapuna in the suburbs of Auckland.

Everybody, understandably, was asking about the Carter mindset, but how about what Slade is feeling like at the moment? I’m guessing Slade feels about as well as a man can feel given that he must be sick to the stomach at the scale of the challenge facing him in the coming weeks.

“Colin needs to understand that he’s Colin Slade. He doesn’t have to be Dan Carter,” said Steve Hansen, assistant coach with the All Blacks.

He’ll never be Dan. And nor will he be given a minute’s peace in the post-Dan period at this World Cup. If he can deal with it, he’s a hero for all time. But he must feel like he has the weight of a doubtful nation on his shoulders at the moment.