Then came what he perceived as a series of rough calls from the referees in the Etihad Stadium loss, the ensuing fall-out involving referees boss Bill Harrigan, and the threat to ban all his players from speaking about Origin in the lead-up to game two.
Barrett denied there was anything sinister in Stuart's no-show - which was not relayed to the media until they had arrived at the team's hotel.
Blues officials claimed Stuart had no reason to speak before the contest as the game was now officially a sell-out and needed no more promoting.
"It's no siege mentality,'' Barrett said.
"He's certainly done enough publicity in the last few weeks to give him a break this afternoon.
"We've got (a crowd of) 84,000 people at Homebush (ANZ Stadium) so job done.''
Certainly Stuart has been prevalent in recent days after using his weekend newspaper column to label the Maroons as ungracious winners.
The comments sparked a war or words with first opposite Mal Meninga and then Smith hitting back at the comments.
Perhaps Stuart did not want to add any more fuel to the fire by speaking again before Wednesday night's match, which NSW must win if they are to avoid a seventh straight series loss.
He struggled to contain his emotion in his last public appearance before game one, when he said "I f...ing hate it'' in reference to Queensland's recent domination of the concept.
His non-appearance caught NSW rugby league general manager Geoff Carr off guard, who knew nothing of the incident some three hours after it had occurred.
"I'm unaware of any of that so I'm not making any comment,'' Carr told AAP.
"I haven't spoken to him (Stuart), I think he's given the media two tonnes of stuff this week, but I'm unaware of whether he's speaking today or not.''
nzherald.co.nz will have live updates of Origin II from 10pm tonight.
- AAP
