Carter out of Tigers tie

Carter: Wait continues

He may be the best player in the world, but you have to understand that is too short a time.

Benoit Brazes
Quotes of the week

Leicester v Perpignan, Saturday 5.30pm, live on Sky Sports 2 and HD2

Related links

Teams

• Leicester

Players

• Daniel Carter

Also see

• Sky Sports experts
• Rugby on Sky
• Live scores

New Zealand star Dan Carter has been ruled out of Perpignan's Heineken Cup clash with Leicester at the weekend.

The All Blacks fly-half looked set to link up with his new team in time for the trip to Welford Road on Saturday.

But despite signing a seven-month deal with the French club it has been confirmed he will miss the game because of commercial commitments.

He will be in Milan fulfilling those obligations on Wednesday and Thursday, and will therefore not make Perpignan's line-up for the Pool Three tie.

"Dan's commitment with Adidas was known about a while ago," said Perpignan's director of communications Benoit Brazes.

"As our three fly-halves are all injured, we tried to make him return on Wednesday evening so that he could train with us on Thursday and play on Saturday. But that has not been possible.

"The only solution was that of a squad training session in Leicester on Friday, 24 hours before the match.

"He may be the best player in the world, but you have to understand that is too short a time."

Carter will fly back to France with the rest of the Perpignan squad after the game though and is expected to be ready for the return match between the two teams the following weekend.