When his long-time team-mates won the previous World Cup he was stuck in the stands watching but Dan Carter took centre stage yesterday and revelled in the glory of the victory he did so much to help the All Blacks achieve.

The 33-year-old was making his final international appearance before joining something of an exodus of senior All Blacks heading for French rugby and he knew this was a moment to be savoured.

“I’m looking forward to a bit of a break and celebrating and enjoying this win,” he said, beaming his delight.

“It’s something unique and special that we’ve achieved. So I’m looking forward to celebrating with the team tonight and over the next week or so and taking some time up to catch up with family before moving on to France and starting a new chapter of my life and career.

“It’s such a special feeling in the changing room right now and the guys are just so happy and pleased with what we’ve achieved. It was a pretty daunting goal to try to win back-to-back World Cups, something no other team’s done before, so to be able to say we’ve done that is just an amazing feeling. I’m just so proud to be part of such a special group of guys.”

He admitted that there has been driven by a yearning to help win a World Cup final since injury wrecked his bid to be part of New Zealand’s victory on home soil in 2011.

“I would have loved to have played in that final in New Zealand but unfortunately I didn’t through injury and I’ve had to work extremely hard in the last four years to get to where I am today,” said Carter.

“There were times during that four years when I was doubting whether I would be here or not so to be part of such a special side and achieve something like this is so pleasing.”

That the veteran play-maker’s performance was so pivotal could not have generated more obvious pleasure among his team-mates as Ma’a Nonu, another of the French-bound brigade, observed.

“I’ll back DC any day,” he said.

“It’s a matter of him backing himself. I thought he just thrived in the last three weeks and showed real self-confidence. I thought he wanted a good World Cup for himself and I think he did that.”

From a personal perspective Nonu said the sensations were similar to those experienced four years earlier, noting that they had actively avoided any reference to this being the end of an era with so many players leaving the squad, including Richie McCaw their captain, whom Steve Hansen said after the match was the only All Black who could be considered even greater than Carter.

“It’s kind of the same feeling,” said the Toulon-bound centre.

“Up until this week we just had the focus of putting everything out there on the pitch, especially in terms of what was happening after in terms of players leaving. We didn’t want that to get in the way and our main emotion was to play for each other.

“It has its meaning in terms of personal meaning and I just want to thank my family for being the cornerstone of my career and the likes of Richie and Dan and especially my midfield partner Conrad (Smith, who is joining Pau). We’ve played a lot together and we might not play again together. We’ll probably see each other in December/January though.”

Nonu paid tribute to their opponents and the way they forced their way back into a match the All Blacks looked to have wrapped up when they moved into a 21-3 lead early in the second half.

“Discipline played a part when we went down to 14 men and it’s how the Australians play,” he said. “They never lie down, they never quit and they came back and scored two tries which put us against the wall and we just had to climb back.”

Deep mutual respect was evident, as also expressed by Israel Folau, the Wallabies full-back, who seemed to accept that he and his team-mates had been facing the best there has ever been and must absorb everything they could.

“We were still confident that we could fightback and get back on the scoreboard, but Dan Carter controlled the game really well and stopped our momentum. He’s a great player,” he said.

“We let ourselves down with so many silly errors, dropping the ball so many times and our decision making tonight wasn’t up to scratch but we have to have to take what we can learn from the All Blacks tonight.

“You learn a lot more when you lose a game, especially a final. It’s not a good feeling but you want to soak it all up and learn from this game and move on.”