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Dan Carter holds up the Webb Ellis Cup after the All Blacks’ victory in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final.
Retired All Blacks superstar Dan Carter says Richie McCaw taught him a lot, but he regretted a rugby tryout: never playing the late great Jonah Lomu.
Carter confirmed Saturday that he has hung up his boots at age 38, ending a career decked out with 112 tests and 1,598 points for the All Blacks.
The legend of the crusaders was asked by England Daily mail newspaper to list the five best players of his time.
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He leaned on teammates All Blacks Lomu and McCaw, England World Cup winning midfielder Jonny Wilkson, former Springboks enforcer Schalk Burger and former France wing and captain Thierry Dusautoir.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
The great Dan Carter of the All Blacks joined the Blues for the 2020 Super Rugby Aotearoa season, but injuries prevented him from taking the field.
Carter revealed that he regretted not being able to wear the All Blacks jersey with Lomu, whose last test was against Wales in 2002, just seven months before Carter’s debut in 2003 against the Welsh in Hamilton.
“He knocked me down about 5m when I tried to knock him down on one of my first [provincial] games, ” Carter said The Daily Mail.
Ben Radford / Allsport
Jonah Lomu, pictured during his four-shot performance against England at the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
“A super star. Gutted, I never played with him. “
Of McCaw, Carter said: “I learned a lot playing alongside my old partner. A true leader and he took us to consecutive World Cups. Thank goodness I was never on the other side! “
The admiration was mutual, with McCaw last December that Carter “must have come very close to beating me” for the World Rugby Player of the Decade award.
Carter said he had “tried to have a similar work ethic” to Wilkinson’s, and playing the England star during the 2005 British and Irish Lions tour was “a bit of a fanatic moment for me.”
Often a target for lazy forwards in the opposition, Carter claimed that Boks’ burger was “an absolute beast” and admired Dusautoir for “blinding games at the big times,” especially against the All Blacks at league tournaments. Rugby World Cup 2007 and 2011.
In the meantime, The Daily Telegraph Veteran rugby writer Mick Cleary paid tribute to Carter by listing All Black as the greatest midfielder in rugby history.
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Richie McCaw and Dan Carter after winning the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
“Carter had a complete game, an accomplished hand and goal kicker, capable of bringing out the best in those around him but also capable of hitting himself, as indicated by his count of 29 tryout attempts,” Cleary wrote.
It had Carter at No. 1, followed by Barry John from Wales, former Wallabies World Cup winner Michael Lynagh, Jonathan Davies and Wilkinson from Wales.
Cleary noted that Carter was “a soft presence on any field (and was appropriate for a man of New Zealand roots so homey that his last game was in front of a few hundred people last year at his local club in Southbridge, just under 30 miles Christchurch), but the skills that have captivated so many over the past two decades were honed by the same obsessive impulses that propelled and tormented Wilkinson.
