Daniel Carter / Photo NZ Herald.
Top test scorer weighs change but sticks to his winning style.
The conjurer is back in business, back in black and back tormenting rugby rivals.
In a decade of test rugby, Daniel Carter has an astonishing goalkicking success rate when he turns out in the All Black uniform.
That's just for starters. His sporting computer and skills drive the All Blacks around the pitch as rivals such as Ireland go through the mangle.
The southern city has its wizard but Carter delivers the magic for a region which has been belted by natural disasters.
It has been a comfort for the area and the All Blacks that Carter has found his kicking clogs once more after the groin injury which terminated his World Cup.
He has a world record number of test points, only failing to trouble the statisticians in two World Cup tests in 2003 when Carlos Spencer then Leon MacDonald were the kickers.
His style has not varied for more than a decade although he did accept he might have lingered a little more before starting his approach last week at Eden Park.
"It is the same routine I have always had," he said.
"I thought about it, coming back it might be a good chance to change things but I just went back to what I know and what I have trained for the last 10 years.
"It has worked well for me in the past so no, nothing."
The 30-year has made a few subtle alterations to that familiar style but nothing he reckoned that would be picked up by anyone other than specialist kickers.
Carter is self-taught after abandoning his father's toe-hacking technique. There has been advice from people like Daryl Halligan and Mick Byrne "but at the end of the day it is my style".
There were times when Carter wondered what a style change would do, whether it would improve his efficiency, whether he would go down the path adopted by a stack of golfers including Tiger Woods.
"If you have bad days, and to be honest in the off-season I have experimented with shorter run-ups and different kicking tees and positioning of the ball and things like that, but every time I go back to what I know.
"You need to have a bad night and you think maybe I should change a few things.
"But I always come back to the fact that it has worked for me in the past, it is what I know and just to be patient and to continue to persist.
"If you work hard enough you will get the results."
Sometimes he might linger a shade more before he began his approach, gathering his concentration, checking his target and rhythm.
His satellite navigation system clicks in the co-ordinates and he can bend the ball depending on the breeze.
For test two, the All Blacks have kept things neat and tight.
"We've had another week together and you tweak a few things and I think that's just something you have to do when you have a three-tests series against the same opposition," Carter said.
"They are going to analyse the game as much as we have and you can't continue to roll out the same things because they will be prepared for that."
The All Blacks' clarity about their game plan was there, they had to add the intensity and attitude needed to control the test match stage.
Backs coach Ian Foster had carefully restricted the plans and constructed ideas so players understood the drill.
"I have been very impressed, he has great knowledge of the game and is a pretty relaxed character as well," Carter said.
Like any rugby team, the All Blacks planned to get the ball into space and out flank or out think the opposition.
"We are just making sure we have those different options and everyone is seeing the same picture and if they are, then the game and the moves can flow a lot better."
Daniel Carter's statistics:
86 tests
1267 points
77.7 per cent success rate
15 points per match