BARRETT’S SUPERB, BUT NZ HAVE FLAWS
MAYBE it’s the case that if Beauden Barrett were asked to drive the New Zealand team bus, he would do the job spectacularly well. Perhaps he could deliver milk with a panache that would set him apart from others who fill the role.
He can certainly fill more than one position on a rugby field.
Saturday saw him provide emphatic evidence of that with a dazzling display at full-back for New Zealand in their 16-16 draw with South Africa.
He had been switched there from fly-half as part of an experiment that allowed Richie Mo’unga to don the No. 10 jersey for the All Blacks. The jury remains out and could be for some time on whether Mo’unga should keep the shirt, but Barrett glittered at No. 15.
Was there anything for Warren Gatland to learn from the exercise and the game?
In a less than complete New Zealand team display, the 28-year-old playmaker stood out with his eagerness to get involved and ability to make things happen.
Barrett may have been playing at the back, but for the former world player of the year there was no hint of waiting for the action to come to him.
Instead, the man from New Plymouth set about imposing himself, touching the ball 16 times in the opening 20 minutes.
The eye-catching stuff was there as the game unfolded, notably when he scorched down the right wing to set up a try for Jack Goodhue. Such was his pace it was as if he had sneaked a souped-up Harley Davidson on to the field.
By the time he’d finished he had put in 22 passes and 21 runs that yielded 87 metres, with two clean breaks and six defenders beaten.
Nor was any of that at the expense of his wider duties.
Several times he popped up to save the day in defence, on one occasion intelligently reading play to dash across and snuff out danger after a kick through from Cheslin Kolbe. True, his goal-kicking was poor. But Barrett nailed it with his general play. Well, neither Wales nor any of New Zealand’s rivals have a player like Barrett. It would be spoiling this generation to bestow on it another such individual.
But perhaps there was something Gatland and Rob Howley might have picked up, namely that full-back is a position of rich attacking possibilities for a team who have a strike-running adventurer in the role.
Put simply, they should discard any idea of switching Liam Williams back to wing for the World Cup. Such a course has been advocated as a means of accommodating Leigh Halfpenny, but were Wales to go down that road they would be harming themselves.
That is not to argue Halfpenny is shy on quality.
Anyone who saw him play for the Scarlets against the Ospreys in the play-off match to make next season’s Heineken Champions Cup would surely agree he has few peers when it comes to reading play and providing assurance for his side.
But prior to scoring two tries against Scotland in 2018 he had gone five years without touching down in Test rugby. Contrast that with the seven in 13 games he scored when starting his Wales career as a zippy and eager wing.
Williams can operate out wide, for sure, but he is better employed at full-back, where he fills the attacking wildcard role to perfection with his ability to ghost into the line. He brings an element of unpredictability and can also be a devastating counter-attacker.
We haven’t even mentioned the self-styled bomb defuser’s ability under the high ball.
Wales’s back three of Williams, Josh Adams and George North delivered during the Six Nations. It would be a bold call to change it at the World Cup. It leaves him as a much-valued member of the squad.
After more than a decade of picking him, Gatland knows what he can do.
But to win a World Cup Wales are going to have to down the best in the southern hemisphere and that means they are going to have to take every opportunity that comes their way.
Counterattacking can’t be an optional extra, while the man who wears the No. 15 jersey needs to not only have pace and skill but also the ambition and derring-do to use such attributes from anywhere on the field.
New Zealand have long known this, which is why they have employed the likes of Ben Smith, Damian McKenzie and now Barrett at fullback in an attempt to maximise the attacking possibilities of the role.
England (Elliot Daly), Scotland (Stuart Hogg), South Africa (Willie Le Roux) and France (either Thomas Ramos or Maxime Medard) are on a similar beat, while the Wallabies had Israel Folau before the freakishly talented ex-rugby league man fire-andbrimstoned his way out of a contract with Rugby Australia.
The best full-backs nowadays do more than provide security at the back.
That is why Williams should stay there for Wales. He would have learned that hopes of Wales doing something truly special at the World Cup are not fanciful.
Both sides made uncharacteristic errors in Wellington, a number of them unforced, while New Zealand conceded 19 turnovers and South Africa’s line-out was hopelessly unreliable.
Mo’unga failed to impress at flyhalf for the hosts, having a number of kicks charged down, while the All Blacks were unable to stamp their usual authority on play.
But the aggression of the Springboks, the way they took the game to the hosts and hit back strongly at the end meant they would have taken a lot from the game.
They started with nine of the team that lost to Wales in Cardiff last November.
Steve Hansen would have been encouraged by his team’s resilience after a dire opening 35 minutes, but the sight of lock Brodie Retallick leaving the field with a shoulder injury will be a worry so close to the World Cup.