Dan Carter has revealed that he strongly considered retiring from international rugby ahead of the last World Cup, only for his wife Honor to talk him into one last shot at the global crown.
Carter, penning a first-person piece on The Players’ Tribune website, has admitted that even he had begun to doubt his ability to go the distance, and maintain the levels of performance required, just past the midpoint of the last World Cup cycle.
Carter wrote about the period where he struggled through the end of the 2013 season and first began to have doubts about his body being up to the challenge, and then those misgivings coming back when he fractured his leg soon after returning from a six-month sabbatical in 2014.
He says for the first time in his life, he began to question his love for this sport. He questioned whether his body could handle it anymore. The critics who had been going on about his age started making more sense to him.
It was here that wife, and mother of his two boys, Honor played her role.
Carter says his wife was his rock and sounding board during this time and, despite his arguments, kept encouraging him.
He says if it wasn’t for her and his love for the All Black jersey, he would probably have long since hung up his boots.
