As locations go for comebacks, it might have been sexier. North Harbour’s rugby ground just across the water from Auckland sees the return early this morning our time of a player who stands alone as certainly the most valuable in New Zealand and arguably in the entire game.

Daniel Carter has not run onto a rugby ground to play a match since Saturday, January 31, when he represented the French club Perpignan against Stade Francais at the Stade de France. In the last minute of that club game, he tore an Achilles tendon.

Thus, Carter’s return represents a significant event. Wearing the colours of his province Canterbury, Carter will seek to demonstrate that he is almost ready for a recall to the familiar jersey of the All Blacks.

But what interests me most about Dan Carter is not what sort of a rugby player he is.

We know he stands above most others for his class, his ability to control a game, to kick to touch and goal with metronomic accuracy and to launch his back line with the subtlest of timing and distribution skills.

He ghosts into spaces, chooses his moment to attack with a shrewd logic and has had the pace to expose the slightest of chinks in an opposition’s rearguard. He is, essentially, a thinking player, someone able to make calm, logical decisions in the heat of the moment. Like all the most gifted sportsmen in the world, he always seems to have that extra second or two to make his decision and execute accordingly.

But much of that we already know. What is not as widely understood is the type of person Dan Carter is. There is a good reason for that.

Carter prefers to keep his own counsel wherever possible, to stay out of the limelight and not prosecute his views to as wide an audience as possible. He prefers to let others do the talking, to make his statements where it matters most, out on the rugby field. He will fulfil his media duties courteously but he will never go out of his way to make headlines through his words.

The last thing you will hear from his lips is the kind of antagonistic, half boasting statement that England crick

et captain Andrew Strauss made this week ahead of the Third Ashes Test at Edgbaston. Strauss’ declaration that “Australia have lost their aura” is a view Carter would never express publicly, even if he actually believed it. One reason for that is, he knows it is dangerous and liable to come back to haunt the speaker and secondly, he wouldn’t do anything that he considered discourteous to the opposition.

At a time when a rugby club with the once mighty reputation of Harlequins in London finds itself up before the ERC court and fined for faking an injury to a player, and three Bath rugby players are also hauled before the RFU disciplinary panel for allegedly bringing the game into disrepute, how refreshing it is to see a player like Dan Carter espousing all rugby’s great virtues.

Carter understands implicitly his responsibilities to the sport and its fine reputation. He is the most understated guy you could ever meet. Of simple tastes, he is humble and friendly; literally, just like the ordinary guy next door.

I can’t remember meeting a top rugby player so unaffected by his status or stature. Sitting over lunch with him a couple of months ago in France, he just struck me as one hell of a nice guy; modest, inoffensive, interested in others and not just himself.

At a time when the good name of the game has taken so many blows from certain clubs and individuals, how refreshing it is that Carter exudes such values. If only all the others were like him.