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Carter weighs up his tutors

Thursday 24th July 2008

Dan Carter: Has all his coaches in the same place at the same time on Saturday

Having been coached by both for over five years now, Dan Carter is in the best position to pass judgement on the match-up between Robbie Deans and Graham Henry, ahead of Saturday's Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup clash.

Everybody is talking about the head to head, with many New Zealanders believing Henry should have been replaced by Deans in the wake of New Zealand's failure at the Rugby World Cup and of Deans' multiple Super Rugby-winning achievements with the Crusaders.

Carter, understandably, refused to come off the fence, but gave a few attributes for those listening to ponder over when asked who he preferred.

"They're pretty similar in terms of both being world class coaches. It's quite tough to compare the two," Carter said to Yahoo!Xtra.

"Graham has great support from (assistants) Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen. They probably work more as a trio.

"At Crusaders level, the environment is a lot more relaxed and because (Deans) has coached at that level for such a long time, he backs the players and has a good rapport with the players."

Henry the disciplinarian, Deans the indulgent father?

"They both pick their times. Obviously Graham, when things need to be shaped up, the old schoolteacher comes out," Carter smiled.

"But when he does speak like that, it's for a reason and the guys really respond to that. It's not a bad thing."

"Robbie is best at bringing the best out of players and I think he's done that.

"He's picked a couple of new guys like (inside centre) Berrick Barnes and Peter Hynes on the wing and they're just stepping up and playing really well."

Carter stopped short of saying whether Matt Giteau's form was down to Deans' mentoring though.

"I don't know if that's Robbie's influence or not. He's a classy player, he's always been right up there," he said.

"Obviously he hasn't played a lot of Test football at fly-half but he's been given that opportunity and he's played extremely well."