Young star lets his rugby do the talking

There’s not much chance that Beauden Barrett’s early success this season will go to his head, writes Toby Robson.

BEAUDEN BARRETT’S no longer in his element as he pulls off his boots and takes a pew on a tackle bag. It seems odd for a guy who a few minutes ago was ordering around 14 grown men with the confidence of a school master.

But when you’ve grown up on a Taranaki dairy farm with seven siblings, talking yourself up just doesn’t come naturally.

The abilities he does have are sporting talent and temperament.

At 20-years-old, he’s still getting used to a media spotlight that’s sure to intensify if his form over the opening three weeks of the Super Rugby season continues.

All the fuss is a far cry from Pungarehu. That’s where the Barrett kids grew up, five boys and three girls, on the family dairy farm half an hour from New Plymouth and about 5 kilometres from the coast.

They loved every minute of the life and sport was an integral part of it. Barrett remembers smacking golf balls off the back lawn, and his five-handicap is the result of hours on the local 18-hole ‘‘sheep course’’.

It still costs just $7.50 for a round on the sleepy par 68, and the paua are still plentiful at the beach the Barretts frequented.

Sport revolved around their dad, Kevin’s rugby career – he played 167 matches for Taranaki and 15 matches for the Hurricanes.

‘‘I remember the early days, going to watch Coastal play,’’ Barrett recalled this week. ‘‘But my first real vivid memory is when they [Taranaki] brought home the Ranfurly Shield in 1996.

‘‘From there I sort of remember him playing for Taranaki and he’s still running around today, which is pretty cool, for the senior thirds at Coastal.

‘‘He keeps pretty fit with the farm work, but I think he wakes up Sunday morning pretty stiff milking the cows.’’

That’s something Barrett did plenty of before being sent off to board at Francis Douglas Memorial in New Plymouth, but his sporting skills aren’t inherited just from his lock-loose forward father.

‘‘Mum [Robyn] claims she’s the one we get our skills from,’’ he said. ‘‘She’s very sporty, she was good at basketball and netball growing up ...

‘[Mum] deserves a lot of credit, too. Raising eight kids, working on the farm, I don’t know how she does it. She still milks the cows a couple of times a day.’ BEAUDEN BARRETT

‘‘She deserves a lot of credit, too. Raising eight kids, working on the farm, I don’t know how she does it. She still milks the cows a couple of times a day.’’

Barrett’s adamant he never envisaged a rugby career, being more focused on where he’d study. A teacher was urging him to head to Melbourne and try his hand at Aussie Rules and Barrett was considering student life in Otago, until he made the Taranaki sevens team.

‘‘Which I was surprised by and then for some reason I made the New Zealand sevens team. I was blown away.’’

That last statement’s hard to fathom because the Hurricanes first five-eighth rarely looks like he’s had his hair blown back by anything.

Away from training

he’s

put study on hold, content with backyard cricket matches at the Wellington flat he shares with fellow Taranaki men James Broadhurst, Richard Buckman and Jason Eaton – and there’s the odd round of golf.

He’s not so much laid-back as no-nonsense. There’s an appealing simplicity and matter-of-fact practicality about Barrett.

It’s the same on the field where he rarely looks ruffled, and seems blessed with that elusive extra second amid the chaos around him.

It hasn’t been so much the performances in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Perth, as the nonchalant manner.

So far, there’s been no discernible weakness. He has a boot that kicked 29 points in a 39-33 win over Bay of Plenty last year – and that punt, which his teacher at Francis Douglas believed wouldn’t be out of place in the AFL.

Just don’t expect Barrett share the hype.

‘‘Yeah, the media’s picked up more than last year,’’ he says. ‘‘I suppose being the first five, it’s part of the job. You are seen to be driving the ship, so you have to front these sort of things.

‘‘I don’t let it get to me. I don’t read too much into media, I’ve just got to worry about my job. There’s good and bad stuff out there.

‘‘You appreciate the compliments, I guess, at times, and use the bad stuff as motivation.’’

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