Dan Carter was the All Blacks' water boy in Cardiff © Getty Images

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Dan Carter "is going to struggle" to play for the All Blacks at the 2015 Rugby World Cup because "he's got three guys underneath him who can do the job just as good", Carlos Spencer says.

Spencer suggested that Carter's injury problems would also make things difficult, having suffered 10 problems that caused him to miss New Zealand games, the majority of then soft-tissue issues, since October 2011.

Carter limped out of his 100th Test, against England at Twickenham in November 2013, with an Achilles injury, and he has since cracked a small bone in his right leg, in the Super Rugby final, after missing the opening stanza of 2014 due to a sabbatical arranged with New Zealand Rugby to ensure he had the best chance of being fit and fresh for the All Blacks' Cup defence in 2015. He subsequently also missed an ITM Cup game with a bruised calf sustained in his first game back from his broken leg, adding further to his depressingly long list of injuries.

Carter played a little over 80 minutes in the two lowest-profile Tests on the All Blacks' recent end-of-year tour - 30 minutes off the bench against the United States and 55 minutes Scotland - and Spencer, a former Blues and All Blacks fly-half, suggested that he needed "a big Super Rugby campaign" if he were to resist the increasingly strong challenge of Beauden Barrett, Aaron Cruden and Colin Slade for the starting Test jumper.

"I think Dan at the moment, to be honest, is going to struggle," Spencer told the New Zealand Herald.

"He just hasn't been right for the last two or three years. He's injury prone and there are no guarantees, especially now for him. He's under pressure. He's got three guys underneath him who can do the job just as good. He has to come back and have a big Super Rugby campaign. If he can do that I think he'll grow in confidence and be right for the World Cup. But when you can choose from four fly-halves, it's not too bad when everyone else seems to be struggling."