The Crusaders lock has acknowledged his poor start to the season.
The captain’s roles extend to handling extensive commercial and public duties.
Scott Barrett, by his own admission,has not played well for the Crusaders this year. It looks like he’s lost a sense of who he is, of what he can be.
He’s a stunning athlete, a beast of a player when he’s in top form andcapable of bringing a potent mix of high-quality grunt work and exceptional soft skills.
The nadir was the Crusaders match against Moana Pasifika two weeks ago, in which Barrett looked powerless and lost, while Ardie Savea – the man many felt should have been All Blacks captain – was an inspirational, unstoppable force.
It highlighted the fact Barrett is in a prolonged slump. He never quite reached the same heights in 2024, and he’s started 2025 as if he has something on his mind – some kind of mental distraction weighing him down and holding him back.
And maybe he does. Maybe he’s riddled with doubt about whether he’s the right choice to captain the All Blacks – gripped by a natural insecurity and sense of unworthiness that just about everyone asked to do the job has initially felt.
But maybe there is something deeper at play with Barrett. Perhaps he’s not necessarily unsure about whether he is the right choice, but he’s unsure about whether he even wants to do the job.
We can only guess at that because New Zealand doesn’t yet have the tools in place for its elite athletes to bare their souls and speak with the sort of honesty and vulnerability that can set them free of the burden they carry.
If Barrett does have feelings that the job isn’t for him, it would be an impossibly difficult admission to make, and he might be inclined to defer to the Kiwi way of burying intensely raw feelings to struggle on with a brave face.
So too will those close to him be inclined to similarly adopt the Kiwi mantra of everything will come right, and that by July, his form will have improved, his confidence will have returned and he’ll be ready to lead the All Blacks.
All Blacks skipper Scott Barrett clearly shows his dismay after the defeat to France in Paris last year. Photo / Photosport
It’s not just that New Zealand can’t quite shake its slightly toxic view of manhood. All Blacks folklore is also rich with stories of supposed heroism and valour that are all about playing through injury and enduring, which solidify the Kiwi view of how men should behave.
It’s best to button up and “man up” – and the extent of Barrett’s public communication on how he feels about the captaincy has been to admit 2024 was tougher than he imagined it would be when he said yes to the job.
Again, this is not unusual, as plenty of captains before him have found the enormity of the job exceeds their expectations.
It looked to me that there was just a hint that Barrett simply didn’t enjoy being the All Blacks captain last year, or at least that he never built any comfort with the off-field requirements and commitments that came with the role. To some, he seemed to finish the year less, rather than more, certain about whether he wanted to do it.
The tactical decision-making, and opportunity to influence the ebb and flow of a test sits within his wheelhouse, and that’s something he clearly relished and learned to do as captain of the Crusaders.
And if the job was restricted to just that – being the chief on-field decision-maker – it is probable Barrett would have enjoyed being the All Blacks captain last year.
But the All Blacks captaincy is infinitely bigger than the Crusaders job, and the former comes with demanding media and commercial obligations.
Less appreciated is that it comes with a relentless pressure of being the person who links the playing group with the coaches, and the person whose name is constantly in the media and public narrative as the team’s figurehead. The captain carries the can for performances that don’t meet expectation.
And it’s these roles that don’t appear to fit so easily – or at all – into the Barrett wheelhouse. He doesn’t come across as a natural orator who is comfortable or assured when cameras are in his face.
He’s from the minimalist school of media interaction and his preference is for brevity – short exchanges that get the job done.
It’s a style that worked well when he was captaining a Crusaders team that rarely put a foot wrong and constantly won, but the All Blacks spent long periods of last year disappointed with various aspects of their work and lost four tests.
The public and the media needed a little more than he was willing or able to give. As captain, he would have felt the pressure to be more effusive as there is an internal drive within New Zealand Rugby to sell the All Blacks as more open and engaging – as a team who know they’re in the entertainment game on and off the field.
There were also several incidents that inevitably would have created friction internally and made Barrett’s job harder still.
The Herald knows that several senior players were upset at the lack of consequences Damian McKenzie faced when he missed the bus taking the team from San Diego to Los Angeles airport after the July test against Fiji.
Damian McKenzie has faced no further punishment after missing a team bus in San Diego. Photo / Photosport
Assistant coach Leon MacDonald also parted company with the team after four tests and then in the final game of the year, there was the infamous incident where TJ Perenara politicised the haka without the blessing of his teammates.
That last incident put Barrett in an invidious position, as he was having to straddle a thin line between not throwing his teammate under the bus and not giving the media an untruthful answer to what had happened.
Barrett underwent a deep review of the 2024 season, but what’s not yet apparent is how he really felt after a prolonged period of self-reflection.
Did he conclude that it was an inevitably difficult year given the scale of personnel change – the team was operating with a new coaching group, many new management, and a new captain – and that everyone will be a year wiser in 2025 and better equipped to work with one another and cope with the pressures of their various jobs?
Or has he seen enough to feel that it’s a job that comes with so many component parts, so many relentless pressures, that he fears he’ll never come to grips with it?
His comments earlier this week, when he said he didn’t disagree with some of the opinions offered about his underwhelming start to the year, were possibly as much a cry for help as they were a concession to the analysis.
“It’s the media’s job to create interest and they’ve got opinions on performances,” he said.
“Possibly those opinions have been not far off the mark. I hold myself to a high standard and potentially some of my performances earlier in the year haven’t been where I’d like them to be.
“I’m not too sure what it is. I don’t want to give too much away. I know the things I’m working on. I’m just getting excited for the Hurricanes this week.”
Scott Barrett: "I don't want to give too much away." Photo / SmartFrame
The cryptic injection of “I don’t want to give too much away” could be nothing, but it could be everything – a thinly veiled message that he’s not at peace with the world.
No one will say anything more about this for now, because the big hope is that Barrett will reconnect with himself, remember who and what he is and be back to cleaning rucks and dominating collisions in no time.
