Any player who enjoys a career that extends beyond a decade tend to have to significantly evolve to survive that long.
It's the nature of the business. Rugby is too physical, too demanding for a player to come in to the test arena in their early 20s and play the same style of football all the way through to their mid-30s.
Dan Carter had two distinct parts to his career. He was a vibrant, running No 10 between 2003 and 2011 and then a tactical controller between 2012 and 2015. Injury took an obvious toll on him in the last four years of his career.
Richie McCaw was a continual work in progress and from being all about the turnovers for much of his career, by the end he was a ball carrier and tackler, almost a second blindside flanker.
Tana Umaga started life as a try-scoring wing and finished it as a bruising secondfive. Michael Jones was a dynamic openside in stage one of his career and a crushing No 6 in the second.
Adaptation is the key to longevity and it shouldn't be seen as something easy to pull off either. Being able to successfully change roles takes enormous dedication and perseverance. Only special players can do it and Kieran Read very much goes into the category of special player.
Like many of the greats before him, he was able to change his game. In fact, he had to make two significant changes as he didn't actually come into professional rugby as a No 8.
Read first came to prominence in 2007, playing for the Crusaders while McCaw and fellow All Black Reuben Thorne were on enforced conditioning breaks.
He was picked mainly at blindside as he was the following year, before making his test debut in the same jersey against Scotland in November 2008.
That was his position back then and after winning a regular slot on the bench by the end of 2008, Read was pulled aside by the All Blacks coaches after that our and asked to switch to No 8.
This story is from the Issue 203 December 2019 - January 2020 edition of NZ Rugby World.
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This story is from the Issue 203 December 2019 - January 2020 edition of NZ Rugby World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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