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England's Word Cup-winning coach puts the issue to bed: 'Jonny Wilkinson or Dan Carter?'
By Online Editors
Former British and Irish Lions and England coach Sir Clive Woodward has described Dan Carter as the best attacking No 10 he has seen - best not the best No 10 of all time.
The former All Black great last night announced that he was hanging up his boots and retiring from all rugby.
Writing in his column for the Daily Mail, Woodward recalled Carter's dominating performances in the All Blacks' 2005 series against the Lions, who Woodward coached.
"His 33 points in the second test at Wellington, including two brilliant tries, was off the Richter scale and possibly the best individual performance I have ever witnessed at test level. The Perfect 10."
Woodward said that series was a wake-up call as to just how talented Carter was.
"Ahead of the tour I don't think anybody in Britain and Ireland had really clocked the true depth of his talent. Until then he had played mainly at centre and kicked a good number of goals. He kicked a stack of penalties against England when we were on tour in 2004 but I don't recall a scarily good superstar player at that stage. He was just a reliable Kiwi centre and a prolific kicker.
"That changed when he switched to 10 and New Zealand moved away from the brilliant but slightly erratic Carlos Spencer. It was his big chance and he seized it with both hands."
However, despite plenty of praise for Carter's career, Woodward believes there is one first-five who was slightly better than the All Blacks great.
"Jonny Wilkinson or Dan Carter? That is the question I often get asked. It's almost an impossible choice. They were, by some distance, the two pre-eminent fly-halves of their era — both incidentally natural left-footers.
"They were both tough and enduring — fly-halves are targeted in all levels of rugby, doubly so when they are world-class goalkickers. I would score Jonny and Dan about equal as the best goalkickers we have seen, Dan was the best attacking 10 I ever saw while Jonny was far and away the best defensive 10 I ever witnessed.
"So where does that leave us? If I was forced into a corner I would go with Jonny. Just. I was lucky enough to coach him for six years and knew his game intimately. With Dan I just admired from afar."
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Skelton may be brought back for the Wallabies so that would be the only reason that may hinder Wilson. Easily the form, most skilful and game IQ of any Oz 8. Valentini’s best and favourite position is 6, but lineouts may be an issue with Skelton, Valentini and Wilson. Will be interesting what Schmidt goes for but for me Wilson should be picked on form. Schmidt rewards work rate, skill and consistency. All that glitters every so often won’t be in contention. Greely is one of those players that has a knack of making the right decision. A coach is going to love him because he knows week in week out he’s going to get the job done. The second try Greely wasn’t the guy who made the initial break it was Flook, Greely was at the bottom of the ruck when Flook was off along the sideline. Greely got up and made the effort to catch up with play but also read the play nicely and hit the pass from Campbell at pace and then held the pass beautifully to Ryan.
Go to commentsSharks deserved to be far further back by the last quarter. Their tackling was awful, their set pieces were disappointing, their defensive organization was poor (especially on the Kok side of the D line), they kept making unnecessary errors, and they never looked like cracking the Clermont defense during those first 60m. Masuku kept them in touch, with some help from the Clermont generosity on penalty opportunities. Agree with the writer of this article. It was belligerence, and ability to raise their pressure game just enough, that turned the last quarter into a Bok-style shutout. Clermont have a reputation of not playing the full 80m, and there was a bit of that for sure. But, quite often when the intensity of a team drops off in the last quarter credit is due to the opponent for tiring them out. At 60m, with the Kok try, you thought that just maybe the game was on. At 70m, with the Mapimpi contribution, one felt that Clermont were fading, while facing a team that would maintain the pressure game through the final whistle. Good win in the end, but the Sharks are still playing way below their potential. And with their resources, and a coach that has had enough time to figure things out, they are running out of excuses.
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