Cautious Barrett good for the Blues
Star’s conservative start has brought better stability to backfield play
The tin clearly said the contents included freeflowing, counter-attack magic and yet that is not what the Blues have discovered since they purchased Beauden Barrett.
Perhaps the running part of his game sank to the bottom of the tin during his prolonged off-season, as now the Blues have prised off the lid, what has sprung out of their star buy is a near unbreakable commitment to low-risk, percentage rugby.
Barrett’s self-discipline in Super Rugby Aotearoa has been phenomenal. He’s buried his natural instinct to run from deep as his default option and has instead set himself up as a sort of Hugo Porta of the backfield.
Barrett has been the master of predictability: unfailingly conservative and orthodox, and it would appear that while he was the game’s great cavalier in Wellington, he’s switched sides in transit and arrived in Auckland as a Roundhead.
No doubt there will be some itching to say the Blues have been duped, wasted their cash, but Barrett has made a brilliant start to his Blues career. The influence he has cast with his accurate kicking and steady decision-making has been infinitely more powerful and lasting than anything he could have managed had he taken the expected Serge Blanco approach to his fullback role.
As much as the Blues needed an astute playmaker at No 10, they needed one at fullback, too, as the backfield is its own strategic hub these days.
It’s an area of the field where the stakes are high. There’s space and opportunity to exploit if the decisionmaking is good and execution accurate.
But there’s danger to be found, too. So much can go wrong in that area.
One poor decision, and the game can be lost. A bad pass, a dropped ball, a poor kick, or a bad tactical option, and a game that was in the balance can suddenly slip away.
For the past decade, the Blues haven’t had the personnel they need at halfback and first-five, but almost as damaging has been the imbalance in their back three.
There has been no shortage of devastating wings in their midst but that’s been as much a weakness as a strength. A weakness because the Blues for too long have taken only a high risk approach to their backfield strategy.
Teams kicked deep to the Blues and they knew what would happen — the ball would be run back.
Sometimes it could be devastating — the Blues could rip any defence, but that tended to be as much about luck as good management, and over the course of a season, the backfield would be an area of vulnerability.
It was an area where they made more mistakes than they exploited opportunities and they desperately needed a backfield general — someone equipped with the vision to see the whole field and the kick and catch skills to provide the right attacking mix.
Barrett, it would seem, has been working on a plan to reset the club’s approach to backfield play.
He could have tried to appease the masses in his first three outings and played high-risk rugby from fullback. Given everyone a reminder of his extraordinary ability as a runner. But all that would have done is deepen the false sense that the Blues can be successful by exclusively taking risks from deep and trying to run their way to a title.
They can’t, and a young team of raw athletes needed to see that games can be won on the back of patience and low-risk option taking. A twist on the pen is mightier than the sword theme.
Barrett has expertly ensured the Blues haven’t put themselves under pressure by playing in the wrong parts of the field.
He’s turned teams around with his boot and put the pressure on the opposition to take the higher risks to win the game.
What the Blues have now is decision-making in all the places they need it and a more diverse suite of attacking options.
Barrett, through his dedicated conservatism so far, has essentially made the Blues more unpredictable, as presumably the self-restraint is not going to last the rest of the season.
At some stage, he’s going to increase his appetite for risk and harness the running power of Caleb Clarke, Mark Telea and Rieko Ioane, and opponents are going to be left uncertain about the value of kicking the ball into the Blues backfield.