RUGBY’S NEW SENSATION
First interview with Wasps’ 20-year-old Alfie Barbeary
BLOODY HELL, is it always this bright?’ says Alfie Barbeary, as the camera flashes for his first photoshoot as a professional rugby player. Given he only left school last year, he can be forgiven for not quite being used to the glare of the spotlight.
‘They say the backs are the goodlooking ones, but I’ll back myself,’ he adds, with a laugh, while posing in the unglamorous surroundings of an empty, unheated back room at the Wasps training ground.
Confidence is not in short supply — on or off the pitch. Barbeary has been tipped as the future face of English rugby, a 20-year-old with the world at his feet. Eddie Jones came calling after his second senior start and, despite playing out of position in the back row, he has scored eight tries in 11 appearances.
So, how do you keep his feet on the ground? Well, a planted question from one of the assistant coaches, Matt Everard, is a starting point. Barbeary’s front teeth have already been knocked out to complete the hard-man image, but what is the real story behind his dentures?
‘This is a stitch up!’ he chuckles, briefly popping out his magnetic dentures.
‘I was messing about at school… one of my best mates went to the toilet and the cubicle walls were quite low, so we started lobbing toothpaste and toilet roll at him.
‘Next thing, one of the guys grabs a toilet brush from the next cubicle and throws it over. We knew that would push him over the edge, so we ran off laughing and he chases us, trousers down around his knees, and launches this toilet brush at us.
‘As I turn to look back, I just see this toilet brush flying towards my mouth. The handle clips me and takes out two of my teeth. Suddenly, I had one tooth in my hand and the other was mangled and I’m there thinking, “What the hell just happened?”. I called my mum and then, with blood all over my face, had to go and tell our teacher I’d slipped.’
Most of Barbeary’s tales are based on his schoolboy adventures. After all, he has barely been in adult rugby for a year. The Wasps management have shielded him from media appearances throughout 2020, but as his performances reverberate across Europe, he can no longer escape the spotlight.
His rugby journey started 40 minutes away from the Wasps training ground. Football was his first love, before he was given a sports scholarship at Bloxham School, where he broke all of their try-scoring records as a grubber-kicking centre.
‘ My dad was a footballer so I wanted to be the next Ronaldo,’ he says, speaking in his first mainstream interview. ‘That ended when he took me down to Banbury Rugby Club with my brother. Mum’s got a big Irish family and they’re all very much i nto r ugby. I moved to Bloxham School in year nine and shifted from fly-half to centre. On Saturdays, we had IT lessons in the morning, before our school rugby match. The teacher let us go on YouTube for the last 20 minutes, so me and my mate just used to watch hi ghl i ght s vi deos o f Mathieu Bastareaud, Ma’a Nonu, Manu Tuilagi. I wanted to be like them. I wasn’t an academic… unless there was an A level in chatting!’
On the rugby pitch, Barbeary soon found his voice. His parents — Denise, a hairdresser, and Nick, who works for a printing firm — took him along to the Wasps academy. His hometown of Banbury fell into the club’s catchment area.
‘When I was called in, the head of academy asked my position,’ he explains. ‘ I said, “Back row or centre” and he said, “Nope, you’re a hooker”.’
He went on to form a powerful scrummaging unit with an unlikely candidate. His academy team-mate Daniel Roche was the child TV star who played the curly-haired Ben Brockman in Outnumbered.
‘I was playing a year up, so in the first week of training I was this quiet Under 14 who didn’t want to say anything,’ he recalls. ‘There was this guy there and, I was thinking, “He looks an awful lot like the curlyhaired kid from Outnumbered”. Some of the guys started chatting to him and I was right! Dan Roche… a prop who was built like a brick! We were in the front row union together. Someone turned on Outnumbered on the TV once and he walked out and slammed the door!’
Together, they rose through the age groups. As a 15- year- ol d, Barbeary was offered one-on-one coaching to nurture his talent. He beat every target he was set. All Black Lima Sopoaga even tweeted last week that a coach described Barbeary as ‘the most talented kid he’d ever seen play the game’. Here was a front-row forward blessed with the speed and skill of a back.
‘Evs used to come to my house when I was 15, during the offseason, and do jackal work and throwing in the garden,’ he says. ‘ Mum would get livid about us tearing up the lawn.’
Word of Barbeary’s talent quickly spread around the age-grade circuits. It was all smooth sailing until last year, when he was called up for the Under 20 World Cup as an 18-year-old. His campaign came to a quick and unsavoury end. He was shown a red card within minutes of coming on to the pitch, for a dangerous tackle, and was subsequently crucified on social media.
‘It was a tough one,’ he reflects. ‘A real shock to the system. I thought that competition would be a stepping stone to help the transition
from school to first-team rugby. I remember coming off t he pitch and I couldn’t believe it… I was in a state. That was a tough one but it was definitely a learning curve to handle all the media around it. I didn’t sulk on it too much and I put it behind me. When I came to Wasps, I had to build up a new reputation for myself.’
Having paid his dues, Barbeary returned to the Wasps academy house, where he still lives. He shares the place with Callum Sirker, Will Simonds and JoshCaulfield.T hey enjoy playing darts and watching Peep
Show. ‘I’m the baby of the house, so the boys make me take out the bins,’ says Barbeary. ‘I know my place... but I’m still holding the house darts title.’
His eyes roll when he is asked if his dart skills have transferred to his lineout throwing. The Wasps management have eased him into senior rugby through the back row, but his long-term goals lie in the No 2 jersey. Throwing, he says, is still a work in progress. ‘Right now, I can go and out and play back row without the nerves around the set-piece,’ he says. ‘ It’s bought me some time to develop my scrummaging and throwing, so I can push forward in that position.
‘ I haven’t played a lot of Premiership games… I’m still fairly new to it, so we’ll see how I progress when I get to hooker and then go from there. Maybe I’ll ease into it in the new year — start in the back row and then move to hooker in the second half, perhaps. If I am to progress the way I want to, it will be at hooker rather than back row.’ England coach Jones has publicly earmarked Barbeary as a hooker, rather than a back row. He is 6ft 2in and 115kg, although claims his peak weight is 112kg.
‘I’m on a big diet,’ he laughs. ‘Mum feeds me a bit too much — I’m still her little baby!’
Size and power, combined with his subtlety of skill, are what make Barbeary such a dangerous asset. He is the blueprint of the new-era, multi-purpose hybrid player. The statistics do not lie: his ball-carrying stats are higher than any other back row forward in Europe since the 2018-19 season. Last week he dismantled French giants Montpellier and now t he spotlight is firmly upon him. He is still pinching himself about his first England call-up, and it surely is a matter of time before he makes his Test debut.
‘I was called in for a little taster during the Six Nations, which was a pretty surreal experience,’ he says. ‘I got a call on the Sunday, after making my second Wasps start against Gloucester. Charlotte, the admin person, said, “Oh hi Alfie, you’re coming into camp tomorrow… Richard Hill’s going to let your club know”. I thought, “Hang about! Am I?” It was pretty cool. I rang my parents straight away.
‘I went back in again during the autumn and just tried to keep my head down. There are positional groups and I was hovering between the front row and the back row. Eddie said to me, “Alfie, you’re not any good at t hrowing, mate, you’re with the back row!” ‘ I didn’t see any of it coming. I feel like I’m living a dream, but I’ve just got to keep working hard.’
By the end of 2021, after a bit more hard wo r k , one suspects Barbeary wil l be well accustomed to the flash of the camera.
‘I DID NOT SEE ANY OF THIS COMING... I FEEL LIKE I’M LIVING IN A DREAM’