Carter fails to exert control amid chaos

Dan Carter gets his kick away as the Samoan defence closes in. Photo / Dean Purcell

Oh dear. What an ugly war, but there was a lesson or two dished out at Apia Park and a reminder of what World Cup games can turn into.

At the centre of that horrible mess of a test match stood Dan Carter, almost literally. It might seem picky to pick on one player from the chaos especially since Carter's goal kicking won the day, and his cross kick created the All Black try.

But around that, the man on who the World Cup campaign will apparently be centred did nothing, failed to take command and kind of seemed disinterested. Carter has been a great player, a legendary player, but there have always been question marks on his game personality, if you like.

He has cut teams apart with his skill and strategies, but if he has an influential iron will it stays in the holster.

For all of his charging about at Apia, it can hardly be said that captain Richie McCaw managed to turn the tide, change the drift of the game, exert his will either. But that was always going to be the downside of having a No 7 as captain in the modern era.

Graham Mourie might have been able to parade about, upright and elegant, as an allegedly outstanding captain. Well, that's what the scribes of the day reckoned. But the modern openside has got no chance apart from taking the odd breath, often in order to tango with the referee.

McCaw appeared too busy hurtling about to pull the troops together and instil some order, which, given New Zealand's World Cup history of messy endings - was a little concerning.

But it is the man in the No 10 jersey who is most able to direct play and Carter didn't in the type of turmoil where a pivot with a century of tests under the belt should shine. Dare I say it, but he looked gun-shy. Maybe he'd been told to stay out of trouble.

Big World Cup games are hardly ever things of beauty which made New Zealand's unconvincing win over the cobbled-together Samoan team more worthy than it looked. Good practice for the trench warfare ahead.

Considering the flow of the second half and the circumstances in which these teams are prepared, Samoa deserved to win. It would have been great fun if they had, and made sitting through the shambles worthwhile.

Because the romance of the build up turned to heartbreak quite frankly - but for the storming Samoan try the game had hardly anything worth remembering.

Things weren't helped by rugby being played in yet another park wholly unsuitable for the spectacle. Athletic tracks are the bane of football spectators' lives.

In addition, the camera work was decidedly old school and the Samoan jersey numbers were impossible to make out. On the face of it, red numbers on blue jerseys should be a cinch in the identification department, but Samoan rugby has conspired to defeat that theory. It was like looking for a needle in a barrel of needles.

The TV commentators couldn't rise above this although Jeff Wilson did a great job of relaying the substitutions, some rare precision on a day in which sport reminded us that tearing up the script isn't always a good thing.