Richie McCaw: I'm not playing to my peak

Richie McCaw. Photo / Getty Images.

All Blacks captain Richie McCaw has struggled to recapture his world-class form in the first half of this year's Super Rugby season but has denied suggestions that the domestic game is now an afterthought to New Zealand's top players.

McCaw, who has played 503 minutes across nine Crusaders games this year, sat down with Tony Veitch on Newstalk ZB this morning to reflect on his side's slow start to the season, which leaves them in fourth place in the New Zealand conference.

"Look, I'm probably not playing to the standard, to my peak and it's probably the same for a lot of us in the Crusaders, but when you're going backwards it's hard to have an impact and in the last couple of weeks I certainly haven't had the impact I would have liked," McCaw said.

But McCaw strongly denied Veitch's suggestion that perhaps Super Rugby isn't that important to All Blacks anymore.

"If you asked the players and saw how much it hurts our guys and how much effort they put into fix things you wouldn't say that. These guys are proud men who don't want to just go through the motions and I'm the same. We want to go out and perform every week. The nature of sport is that it's not easy to do that every week but we are certainly trying.

"Over 12 months to be at the peak of your game every week is a very tough thing to do and sometimes you just have to realise that."

All Blacks first five Dan Carter had a wayward night with the boot in the Crusaders 26-9 loss to the Chiefs on Friday night missing three regulation kicks and McCaw suggested his problems were synonymous with the groups.

"Underneath it all you don't really know what's going on but I know outwardly he backs himself and is trying his damndest to get some games under his belt without having an injury.

"I think it might be a symptom of whats happening in our team at the moment, those things that you would normally nail, just not quite right and it adds up to performances that aren't where we want them to be.

McCaw said he had no problem with New Zealand players deciding to play overseas and that it can be a very tough call to make.

"I think sometimes it's easy to say the decisions are made straight off the dollars flicked in front of the face, like 'right I'm off'.

"But these guys put a lot of thought into it and get a lot of help with their decisions and everyone has a different situation too, you've got to remember that.

"Sometimes the money side of things can have a bigger impact on some players than others, but for others its about playing test matches and you cant bedrudge players for having different opinions.

"As long as they understand where they sit in NZ rugby then hopefully the decision is bloody hard for them to make to leave.

"Sometimes instead of looking at the guys leaving it's good to look at who has committed and there's still a pretty damn good group of players who are going to be around for the next few years which I think is better to focus on because we're still going to have a bloody good bunch."