Chris Rattue: Time's up: Dan Carter should be dropped

The explanations for the All Blacks' mainly awful performance against Georgia have been flowing thick and fast and yet the man in the middle of the mess seems to remain untouched.

Dan Carter had a shocker, his performance being so bad that it was hard to discern what the supposedly deliberately twisted game plan actually was. His goalkicking was completely off, his command as impossible to find as his running game, some hospital passes to team mates bordering on a dereliction of duty.

The convoluted excuses for this flat and inaccurate All Black performance have at least provided light relief in a slow week. The latest involves coach Steve Hansen's celebration of the All Blacks' defence, presumably the way they shut out the attacking threats posed by Namibia and Georgia, and their control of an Argentinian side they know through and through. Yes, we've all been jumping for joy over that.

It is, to be fair, a coach's job to shield his players from too much heat. But that doesn't mean we have to enthusiastically digest everything we are being fed.

What I can't work out is why so little is being said about Carter.

Carter needs to be dropped on that performance alone. Instead, we've been bamboozled with tales of All Black subterfuge, the sort of double dealings that could fill a John le Carre novel. Next thing, there will be corpses turning up in opposition hotels with fake game plans stuffed in their pockets.

It's time for Colin Slade or Beauden Barrett to be given the mantle. If they were good enough to make this squad primarily as No. 10s, and that's what selector Grant Fox clearly stated, then this is the moment to elevate one of them. Both would offer more of a running threat, whereas Carter was a sitting duck who turned his outside backs into target practice against the stoic Georgians. He even fluffed a penalty line kick. And if Barrett isn't selected because of doubts over his goalkicking, then he should not have been taken as a primary No. 10 prospect in the first place.

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The ritual slaying of Australia at Eden Park aside, Carter has had a very ordinary season and that includes at the Crusaders where he was shunted to second five-eighths. The word is that Todd Blackadder moved Slade to No. 10 for a very simple reason - he rated him as the better first five-eighths at the time.

What amounted to an official rebuke of Carter's form emerged with Fox's revelation that Carter was competing for his World Cup spot with Lima Sopoaga going into the Eden Park test, with Slade and Barrett assured of their places on utility value.

The more you looked at Carter against Georgia, the more you had to say that leaving Sopoaga behind was a blunder. This is not being wise after the event, because many All Black supporters were baffled by the Sopoaga omission in the first place. The first five-eights selection policy was over-thinking gone wrong.

If Sopoaga couldn't force his way in after the very promising debut in Johannesburg, what was the point of playing him there at all? You would certainly back his goalkicking ahead of Barrett's, and maybe even Carter's right now. Sopoaga may also be the man most likely to unleash a drop goal, and the importance of that can't be underestimated either at the World Cup.

The bottom line: if Carter remains in control after his Georgian debacle, then it's official - he's a protected species while Barrett and Slade could be viewed as patsies helping keep him in place.

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