"And the money isn't bad either." We can say it, and rugby stars can think it, but they'd rather stick pins in their eyes than confess it.

Hence the talk of 'moving out of comfort zones' and 'embracing new challenges' when England centre Ollie Barkley moved from Bath Rugby to Gloucester Rugby, leaving one West Country club in the top six in the Premiership to join another West Country club in the top six in the Premiership so close to each other that he wouldn't even have had to move house.

Hence the Dan Carter soundbite that the over-riding reasons for the New Zealand outside-half's move to Perpignan for this season was the challenge of playing in the Heineken Cup, even though he was to join his new employers too late to have any real influence on their progress in the competition.

True, his first appearance in the blood-and-gold colours of the Catalan club ended in a European Cup win over pool leaders Leicester, for which he received the man of the match award, but his new paymasters had already lost two games in the competition and, whatever he did, would always be reliant on other results falling their way to have any chances of making the lucrative knockout stages.

And the reason he didn't join Perpignan in time for the much more crucial first leg against Leicester at Welford Road even though the all-conquering All Blacks tour of the northern hemisphere had finished in plenty of time? You've guessed it – money.

New Zealand had an apparently unbreakable commitment to their kit sponsors Adidas, and required Carter for a photo shoot in Milan.

The delay not only harmed Perpignan's chances of progress in the Heineken Cup – in the process making a mockery of their star signing's stated reasons for joining them – but also meant that the money per match that Perpignan will be shelling out for him rose to even more obscene levels.

Even if the Catalans are to reach the final of the French championship – currently they lie third – the 700,000 euros that he is to receive for his six-month sabbatical away from the All Blacks would divvy up at about £30,000 per game.

Compare and contrast, as they say in the best university exam papers, the activities of two other famous Antipodean rugby players in the news this month.

Anton Oliver, one-time All Black alongside Carter, and Dan Vickerman, one-time Aussie opponent of the man who has just become the world's highest-paid player, were lining up opposite each other in the Varsity match at Twickenham.

Both had turned their backs on big-money contracts in the professional game. Oliver, in fact, had passed up the chance of earning shed loads of money from super-rich Toulon – a decision, we are told, which Carter also made.

But, whereas Carter, all in the cause of playing at most two meaningful matches in the Heineken Cup, has had to settle for slightly less money – given what we know of his salary at Perpignan, the mind boggles at the size of the salary he is alleged to have turned down – Oliver and Vickerman have gone back to their amateur roots.

But while they cycle between their digs , their lecture-rooms and their training fields, and Carter takes the limousine from his Mediterranean villa to the swanky restaurants and state-of-the art stadium of Perpignan, all three will, in the sense, be doing the same thing.

They are all facing up to the question that no professional sportsman can ever avoid; What happens next?

Of course both Oliver and Vickerman are older than Carter and so much nearer the end of their shelf life than him, that while they are pro-actively taking the first steps towards a new career, he is just putting aside some rainy day money for when that moment arrives.

Of course, too, a hooker (Oliver) and a lock (Vickerman) are less marketable than an outside half and, though seasoned internationals, have nowhere near the global appeal of the younger man.

As a result, Carter can expect to be mobbed wherever he goes in rugby-mad Catalonia.

The paparazzi will be camped outside his house and his every move both on and off the field will be scrutinised, dissected, analysed and discussed by a hero-worshipping public.

He won't be able to go anywhere or do anything out of the unforgiving spotlight. But then, the money is not bad either.