Barrett preaches togetherness
Jordie Barrett has seen three of his mates go down this week with the virus and when you’re part of a team as close as the All Blacks are, that hurts. But it also steels. And galvanises.
Barrett, the cast-iron starting fullback for Saturday, says the emphasis among the All Blacks still standing in Auckland this week has been very much on the latter two aspects, and not the former. They feel for their mates – three players, all backs, have thus far been laid low by Covid-19, as well as head coach Ian Foster and assistants John Plumtree and Scott McLeod – but have adopted a ‘‘roll with the punches’’ mentality.
The All Blacks will be slightly understrength for Saturday’s opening test against Ireland.
That’s a given after midfielders David Havili and Jack Goodhue were revealed on Monday as having tested positive for Covid-19 over the weekend, and Crusaders fullback Will Jordan had joined them yesterday.
Havili was the likely starting No 12, Goodhue a decent chance of being named as midfield bench cover and Jordan, arguably New Zealand’s form player of Super Rugby Pacific, would been in the run-on XV somewhere, most likely on the right wing.
Barrett told yesterday the mentality in the camp had been very much to cast words like ‘‘disruption’’ and ‘‘setback’’ into the rubbish bin.
‘‘You kind of flip it on its head and it’s a good opportunity, especially at the start of the campaign, for players to take a bit more ownership and responsibility and understand their own game and the team game and what we’re trying to achieve in these* three weeks,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s not ideal. You lose a bit of edge around some important people in the environment, but I’m taking a positive approach to it, like the team, and trying to use it as a time to galvanise as a group.’’
The All Blacks have always had a ‘‘next man up’’ mentality around injuries, and the same applied here, Barrett said. ‘‘It’s not the worst. It happened on a Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. It’s a blessing it happened this early in the week. Any later and it disrupts team combinations and detail around training. But it’s happened early, we’ve been in this Covid sphere for a couple of years now, and we’ve been dealing with it during Super Rugby, we dealt with it last year on the northern tour, so we’re just going to take it in our stride.’’
Barrett was adamant the All Blacks would still send out a team more than capable of getting the job done at Eden Park.
‘‘You pick an extended squad for a reason. We understand if you’re not picked, you’ve got to be ready, and if you are ready and you get a crack, then that’s your opportunity,’’ Barrett said
There has also been a lot of talk in the All Blacks camp about the players taking a lead role earlier than a normal week. Barrett explained how that was working in Auckland on the Covid carousel.
‘‘The coaches front load our detail and plan at the start of the week, present it to the players, and as the week goes on the coaches taper off and leave it to the players to drive that response and edge around training and lead those areas.
‘‘This week on Monday and Tuesday players were standing up delivering our messaging, our defence and attack plans and had kind of taken responsibility that coaches would normally carry. It’s not a bad thing.’’