There’s a retro theme to the All Blacks selection for the final home match of the year, with Beauden Barrett back at No 10 and his old Hurricanes pal TJ Perenara playing at halfback.
It’s maybe even an end-of-era vibe, as this is it for Perenara – his last test on home soil, and maybe his last test.
But what the future holds for Barrett is an impossible guess. Maybe his selection at No 10 in Wellington will be his last in that particular jersey, or maybe it is the start of a resurgence – the second coming of Barrett as the All Blacks preferred playmaker and the first of many tests he is going to play at first-five between now and the 2027 World Cup.
If the latter is going to come to fruition, Barrett is going to need to wind back the clock to his glory years of 2016 and 2017 and hope that it’s enough to persuade All Blacks coach Scott Robertson to trade out of his investment in Damian McKenzie as his preferred No 10.
But if Barrett, now 33, is to have his second coming, it will also take an enormous amount of luck to stay injury-free, a compelling revamp of Super Rugby and for his desire to stay in New Zealand to remain as strong as it currently does.
And maybe hardest of all, he’s going to have to get comfortable with spending almost half his life away from a nuclear family that contains two preschoolers who will soon be hitting that age when they have regular milestone events.
He is, then, the veritable juggler with so many balls in the air, but perhaps because he’s always had insanely good peripheral vision, he says he can see the World Cup in 2027 out of the corner of his eye.
It’s somewhere on his horizon – a tantalising promised land that he would love to reach, but he can’t be sure if the boat in which he currently sails will make it that far.
He doesn’t know his metaphoric sea worthiness – as he says it’s a complicated business to measure, involving as it does factors both within and outside his control.
“I am one season at a time right now,” he says. “I am committed to New Zealand, but there is no guarantee that I will make it that far.
“The desire is still there to give it a crack, but I have to consider my family, my performance and my desire.
“That is ultimately what it will come down to and whether I want to be here, and if that fire is still burning inside of me.
“My body is good, head is good, heart is good, family is happy. If my performance is good, and I’m being picked [by the All Blacks] then one year leads to another and before you know it the World Cup is one year away, and you are a chance.”
The tendency is to assume that with older athletes, it will be physical deterioration that will ultimately kill their dreams.
In Barrett’s case, that’s particularly true, as his game has always been built on his searing acceleration, and top-end speed to coast through non-existent holes.
Barrett, himself, in explaining how he sees the next few years playing out, referred to himself as “ageing”, until he was persuaded that “ageing” has connotations, that it implies wear and tear is building, that the reactions are slowing – neither of which appears to be happening based on how he’s playing.
He clarifies that physically he’s in the same shape at 33 as he was at 23 - but he’s conscious there will be others who hold perceptions - and he says the harder challenge will likely be around his mental wellbeing and desire to keep putting himself through the necessary intensity of training, the hours on planes, and weeks away from home.
“I have learned that rugby is important, but it is certainly not everything,” he says.
“Getting married and having my girls has put a lot of things in perspective around the importance of life.
“The challenging thing is that your kids get older and grow and you start to miss out on quite a bit, and they start wondering, ‘why is my dad not here?’ and that is the hardest thing about it.
“It means that when you do go away you want to make it meaningful and worthwhile – more purposeful.
“It doesn’t get any easier, that’s for sure. Emotionally it is harder because of that. The intensity and expectations of performing under all of that. It does add another layer.”
Barrett has made sure his time with the All Blacks this year has been purposeful.
The evidence is writ large that the team has played better when he’s been on the park and that they need his kick and catch skills in the backfield, his ability to organise the back three, guide the 10 and be a punchy strike runner.
He hasn’t quite been vintage Barrett in 2024, but he hasn’t been so far off either and he partly attributes that to finding a medic when he was playing in Japan earlier this year who fixed a debilitating Achilles injury he’d been carrying throughout the entirety of the last World Cup cycle.
“My Achilles is the best it has been … I don’t even talk about it now,” he says.
“Previously between the two World Cups in 2019 and 2023 I was running around at 80%.
“I couldn’t train as much and then this trip to Japan was the best thing for me finding the person to fix it.
“Physically I have been able to do things – train more and train more intensely.”
Fixing his Achilles has given him a new lease of life: enabled Barrett 2.0 to be unleashed.
Some will say it’s mad to believe this new version will still be playing at the level he is now when he’s 36, but plenty of others – Johnny Sexton, Brian O’Driscoll and Dan Carter albeit he had retired from test rugby at 33 – have done it, and there are several powerful motivating factors driving Barrett.
The fact he couldn’t play at his best during the last cycle is one; his personal desire to continue to improve is two and, what has really lit a fire within him, is the opportunity to be part of what is the largest change within the All Blacks for 20 years.
There’s a new coaching group, new management and a host of new players, and senior figures such as Barrett have felt an obligation and responsibility to hang around to help the transition.
“The amount of changes we have had, I feel responsible for influencing this transition,” he says.
“It is a completely new group, and we anticipated it not to be a smooth transition, so it is important that us leaders problem-solve and adapt and evolve. So there are many different factors why I am still going on. There is plenty to get out of bed for.”
There is one other major factor that will determine whether Barrett stays in New Zealand until 2027 – and it is the shape and direction Super Rugby takes after next year.
Since the 2019 World Cup, Barrett has been all about finding ways to enrich his rugby experience between February and July each year.
He joined the Blues from the Hurricanes in 2020: had a sabbatical with the Suntory club in 2021 and this year played for Toyota Verblitz, where he was back under the watchful eye of Sir Steve Hansen.
“Being back with Steve was great,” he says. “I enjoyed that. Playing with Aaron Smith. Playing with Pieter-Steph du Toit and getting close with his family was great.
“But the best thing was the refreshing life up there off the field. The privacy, safety, anonymity was great for our family.
“The rugby is as hard as you want it to be because only you decide how hard you train and how hard you play, but the level has improved.”
The benefits of what time abroad brings to the mental wellbeing of senior players is undisputed, but it remains a source of contention within New Zealand Rugby executive and high-performance circles about what time in Japan does the playing ability of key All Blacks.
Barrett, though, has challenged the conventional thinking on that front by delivering consecutive man-of-the-match performances in the first two tests of the year.
“I sincerely mean and believe that the rugby [in Japan] is at a level to make it possible to go to test rugby,” he says.
“When there was a chance for me to play for the Blues at the end of Super Rugby, I was buggered physically and a little bit mentally too because I gave a lot to that season.
“And the break from the World Cup to the Japanese club season was short – just four weeks. I needed a rest and so not being eligible for the Blues I got a couple of weeks off and that was good – a short, sharp refresh.
“But ultimately it was dedicating myself to learning and contributing to whatever role I was given against England immediately because that was what was required and needed. I know how to prepare and get ready for a test match.”
Whether anyone in the right places took note of how easily he transitioned from Japanese club rugby to test matches is difficult to know, as NZR boss Mark Robinson says that he and his board resolute that there is no intent to start reviewing current eligibility settings to enable picking overseas All Blacks.
In which case, Barrett has run out of legitimate ways to spice up his rugby life, as he can’t take another sabbatical, and a proposal – one encouraged by NZR’s executive – to enable him to play in Europe in 2024 and 2025 and remain eligible was rejected by the board in late 2022.
If he is to stay in New Zealand, he’ll have to do three consecutive years of Super Rugby and this may be the key to whether he’s still around in 2027.
Next year Super Rugby will have 11 teams – a scenario that is neither sustainable or compelling, and Barrett like many other senior players who has been around through all the various incarnations of the competition, may find that his motivation wanes to hang around if a viable solution is not found for 2026.
And in his mind, there is only one solution to the problem. “I have always wanted the Japanese teams, but it is challenging with their current competition.
“There are five teams there who could compete easily in Super Rugby so that for me is where it is.
“The investment there is significant and teams are well backed. It is just a matter of structuring the conversation.
“That would make a huge difference to the game – both the on and off-field experience – because innovation in Japan is some of the best in the world when it comes to rugby.
“If South Africa is not involved – and it would be great for them to be involved but if that is out of the picture – then I think we have to look at the similar time zone of Japan and you couldn’t just do two teams or one team from Japan, it would have to be four or five teams.”
And Barrett is equally certain that if Japan are persuaded to reconfigure their season and align with Super Rugby, that it has to come with a commitment from NZR to change its All Blacks eligibility policy.
“If you are going to have this grand new competition it will be a question of eligibility in New Zealand and where do you draw the line,” he says.
“I think the line needs to be somewhere around test caps and that line in the sand is up for discussion, but I think it is inevitable.
“You start with the competition and if that opens, then the next chat is eligibility.
“It is a good discussion for the players, the rugby unions, and the competition because Japan is a beast structurally and well set up but whether they have an appetite for change is another question.
“You have got to give them some incentives or good reasons to do so.”
There’s no hotter topic in the game right now then who should be wearing the All Blacks No 10 jersey, and those who have ruled out Barrett on account of his age and the lack of certainty about him still being here in 2027, may have to reconsider whether that’s as unlikely as they believe it is.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
