Tom Carter has continued his remarkable sporting journey after a polarising rugby career

He knows exactly what most people thought of him during his playing days.

And he admits he didn’t help himself with many of his on-field antics, including a bit of niggle and frequent sledging.

Round 1 of the 2012 Super Rugby season sticks out.

The Waratahs are holding on to a 21-18 lead over reigning champions, the Queensland Reds. With under a minute on the clock, Carter hits Reds winger Digby Ioane, who loses the ball forward on the halfway line.

Standing over Ioane and with the game surely in the bag, Carter gives the Reds and Wallabies winger a mighty spray, gesticulating wildly as he does so.

Then …

Brendan McKibbin doesn’t find touch with a box kick.

The Reds spread it wide to the right.

Dom Shipperley breaks through some weak defence and runs 60m untouched to score the winning try.

Carter was crucified by fans and the media for that one.

“I’ve tried to distance myself from the Waratahs and Sydney Uni because I was so polarising in that sense,” Carter, now 39, tells CodeSports. “When you try and get a job, and that’s the first thing someone says: ‘My God, I remember you playing …’

“You can’t change the past but perhaps I might have behaved differently.”

But just as he was a lightning-rod for criticism at a time when the Waratahs were often a large, slow-moving target, there are many more people who sing his praises and always have.

Behind Tom Carter the fiery player is a devoted dad and loyal mate. He’s a deep thinker who has two masters degrees and is halfway through a PhD. He’s a passionate advocate for women’s sport and is now challenging many of the orthodoxies so deeply ingrained in the upper echelons of coaching.

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In the final year of his career at the Waratahs in 2013, Carter scored a double against the touring British and Irish Lions in front of a sold-out Sydney Football Stadium.

It was a fitting farewell for the NSW veteran and even his harshest critics couldn’t help but be happy for him.

Carter gives an honest assessment of his own career, nine years after his last game in the sky blue jersey.

“I wasn’t the best player. I think I was very hardworking,” he says. “I have fond memories and no regrets.

“I gave it my all and was never good enough to play for my country, but I played a little bit of Super Rugby and a bit of Sevens, which was something I’m pretty proud of, and I had some fantastic years at Sydney Uni.”

Of that double against the Lions, he’s even blunter.

“I waddled over the line for the first and fell over for the second,” he jokes. “It was a special ending.”

Carter was a stalwart of a Sydney Uni first grade outfit that dominated club rugby in the late 2000s and early 2010s, which probably explains some of the angst sent his way. ‘Anyone but Uni’ is still a common phrase heard on the hill at Rat Park or the pavilion at Coogee Oval.

Despite his Shute Shield success, he was never quite able to transfer the club rugby vibe to the professional ranks.

“I played with a lot more freedom in club rugby,” he says.

“Whether that’s a skill deficiency or not, I certainly didn’t feel like I expressed myself with enough freedom in Super Rugby, when you feel like you’re playing for your position every week as opposed to just playing footy.

“I regret that. I wish I offloaded the footy and played with a smile on my face rather than with such intensity.

“Ultimately, it’s just a game. You can get a bit ahead of yourself; you’re not curing diseases or anything.

“You’re playing a game of footy that you should love and enjoy.”

His decade-worth of pre-seasons is a classic example of his misdirected energy, he says.

“You start pre-season and all you’re obsessed with is how to get picked when the season starts, as opposed to, ‘How can I be a better player or athlete?’ and adding to that every year,” he explains.

“I spent 10 years at the Waratahs and I’m not sure I could say I felt a more athletic player than when I started.”

That mindset now forms one of the guiding principles to his coaching. Since 2018, Carter has been the Head of Athletic Performance for Australia’s women’s Sevens team.

His coaching involves hyper-specialisation as opposed to a broad approach to training, which can rub people up the wrong way.

But what else is new?

“Specialisation and individualisation at that level is so important,” he says.

“It’s one of the bugbears of my existence. We have this generalist approach – and yes, a general approach is OK if you’re just starting out – but at that level, it’s almost an American model. All the superstars over there have their private coaches.

“At the top of the game, they need specific attention to support and to optimise qualities that are going to make the biggest difference.

“There’s a real art and enjoyment in breaking down how someone needs to improve this to achieve that. It’s almost reverse engineering.

“That’s pretty polarising and pretty confrontational, because it challenges the status quo around how things should be done.”

A cricket tragic, some of his fondest memories have come while working with athletes wearing a baggy green rather than the green and gold.

He has worked extensively with Brad Haddin and the pair grew so close that the ex-Test wicketkeeper was in Carter’s wedding party.

Nathan Lyon is another great example of Carter’s methods at work.

“I’ve trained Nathan for around nine years now and when I first met him, I told him, ‘I’m not going to talk to you about off-spin but I can talk to you about what you need to do to be more athletic to be able to bowl,’” he says.

“People have their perceptions on how he looks but he’s incredibly powerful, he’s got really good rotational power and really good hip and trunk control. That’s what spin bowling is.

“So we do a lot of work around ankle, hip and trunk control and power. That transfers specifically into his bowling.

“No, he’s not going to be the fastest person over 100m, but he’s really dynamic in the field.

“It took a while to earn that trust but when you work at it and it transfers into a game, those are the moments you enjoy most as a coach.”

It isn’t always smooth sailing.

Australia’s women’s Sevens team went to the postponed Tokyo Olympics last year as the reigning champions but finished fifth after losses to the USA and Fiji.

By any measure, it was a disappointing finish, even when factoring in the 12-month delay and the lack of high-level competition in the months ahead of the Games.

Eight months after that disappointing result, Carter believes there was too much focus on the gold medal.

In a throwback to his own playing days, and a reflection of his current approach to coaching, he believes the squad focused on the wrong thing.

“There was such a big focus on the Olympics, winning gold, winning gold, winning gold, and I think we lost sight of what was the most important thing, and that’s getting better every day,” he says.

“If there was one thing I could’ve done differently, it would be not talking so much about winning gold.

“I was lucky enough to do some work with Bronte Campbell as well and she asked, ‘How do you eat an elephant?’

“I was like … where are we going with this? And she said, ‘Well, you eat it one bite at a time.’

“That’s really important, particularly in our group.

“We talk a lot in Australian rugby about beating the All Blacks, winning a Bledisloe Cup or a World Cup. But we’re quite robotic; and that’s who I was as a player, robotic and linear.

“The Kiwi teams do it really well. It’s like water flowing. They move into spaces and attack those spaces fluently.”

His philosophies on coaching stand at odds with the image of him as a hot-headed player.

In reality, he’s always been a keen learner.

“I did my first degree in psychology and environmental science, then did a Master of exercise and sport science,” he says. “Then I thought, as a player you have all these technical skills but how do you relate that to coaches? So I did a Master of coaching.”

He’s now balancing family life and a hectic coaching schedule with his PhD, which he hopes will help tell the story of the Aussie women’s Sevens side.

“It’s looking at strength and power in female Sevens players,” he explains. “Looking at what a game of Sevens looks like and integrating some of that stuff around what physical qualities influence performance.

“Female sport is something I’m really passionate about and I’m really passionate about growing it. I don’t feel like our group gets the recognition they deserve at times.

“They are the most incredible athletes. Their work ethos is second to none and I’m really proud to be involved with it.”