Meet the man who bred three All Blacks
Kevin ‘Smiley’ Barrett tells Mick Cleary that his children thrived playing sport in great outdoors
It was tough to track down Kevin ‘Smiley’ Barrett, a grafting Taranaki farmer and father of Beauden. Eventually, the apology came back. “Sorry I wasn’t around,” he said. “I was out tagging heifers.” As excuses go, it is illustrative of the man and his family and, in its way, of a throwback lifestyle for New Zealand rugby players: a man of the soil and of earthy principles, loyal, steadfast, a good bugger, as it is termed in these parts. The Barretts have good roots.
It is said that Kevin’s nickname, ‘Smiley’, derived from the fact that he went about his business in the amber and black jersey of Taranaki with a faint smile on his face as he deployed physical mayhem on the opposition.
Rugged, uncomplaining, durable, honest, a grafting member of the forwards’ brotherhood. Kevin played 167 games for Taranaki and also had several outings for the professional outfit, the Hurricanes, across two seasons.
Folklore has it that after his farewell match at the Yarrow Stadium in New Plymouth, Barrett was interviewed on the pitch and when asked what he intended to do, said blithely: “I’m off to breed some All Blacks.”
“In fact the story has been garbled,” said Barrett. “I did say that, but in a match programme piece about what I’d like to do in the future one day. I wasn’t even b----- married at the time.”
The Barretts, Kevin and Robyn, have quite some gene pool. Their eight children, five boys and three girls, are all achievers.
“They were natural country kids, outdoors every hour of the day, messing about, playing games, footy, cricket, whatever,” said Kevin.
The boys joke that their characteristics came from their parents, the competitive graft of their dad allied to the athleticism of their mum, who was a fine netball player and also represented New Zealand at basketball. “There were no gadgets, no Playstations, just the back field for games,” said Kevin.
Many kids would have kicked about in a backyard the way that Beauden, Scott and Jordie did (along with their other siblings), but few have become All Blacks.
“It was just about running, about catching and passing, about skills and enjoyment,” said Kevin, who had assistance in his tutoring from a former All Black flanker, the renowned Graham Mourie. “It was about being competitive too. I hate losing at anything, cards, footy, everything.”
It proved to be a formative upbringing, as illustrated by the fact that one of Barrett’s actions on Tuesday was to tag a heifer with its yellow tag and inscribe “3ABS” on it. Robyn and Kevin were at Eden Park last Friday. “It was special,” said Barrett. Quite so.