Beauden Barrett appears to have lost his treasured ability to play on instinct. Photo / Photosport
Beauden Barrett appears to have lost his treasured ability to play on instinct. Photo / Photosport
OPINION
Truly great players, the kind everyone still talks about decades later, almost always become victims of their own success.
It happened to Dan Carter in the last few years he played in New Zealand.
Constant, serious injury prevented him from playing anywhere near the standard he had set earlierin his career and when he pottered around to no great effect in early 2015, there was an unseemly rush to write him off.
That’s the danger of having been brilliant for so long - a drop in form is immediately noticeable and analysts are inclined to catastrophise when there has been such a memorable body of work with which to contrast and compare.
Carter, in a way, was hoisted by his own petard, a fate which is beginning to feel may now be Beauden Barrett’s, too, after he played as if he was wearing a blindfold against the Chiefs.
The 31-year-old produced what can only be described as a horror show, and were it an entirely isolated performance, it would unlikely have registered - but far from being an aberration, his work in Hamilton felt like the culmination of weeks, if not months, of slow decline.
Memories of a swashbuckling Barrett, cruising past bewildered Wallabies defenders or flipping impossible passes against the Springboks, are so faded now as to be hard to recall.
The last performance he gave that had everyone shuffling to the edge of their seats was in Cardiff two years ago, when he won his 100th cap.
The clock wound back that day as Barrett was at his imperious best - confident, certain and willing to believe in his brilliance.
Beauden Barrett after receiving his 100th cap for the All Blacks. Photo / Getty Images
That was maybe the last time he played with the nonchalance that defined his earlier career: the last time he backed himself to pull off the impossible and remind the world that he is the most talented rugby player to grace the global game in the last decade.
Since then, Barrett has drifted into a netherworld where it has seemed that neither he, nor anyone coaching him, can make up their minds what they want from him.
He’s been bounced between first five and fullback and often played as if he’s been told to apply the same strategic brief to both roles.
When he takes possession these days, it’s as if he’s working through some workflow chart to determine what to do next and each arrow leads him to the same action - kick the ball high and don’t chase after it.
The Barrett of old never gave any sense that he needed to go through any process, and he appears to have lost his treasured ability to play on instinct.
The doubters will say that loss is likely permanent and that the All Blacks should put a red line through his name.
But the problem with condemning truly great players is that it fails to remember they are truly great.
Just like Carter did ahead of the 2015 World Cup, Barrett is going through a bad patch, one from which he is capable of playing his way out of and recapturing the scintillating form of his mid-20s.
The only barriers to him reverting to a version of his former best self are physical capacity and desire - and he can clear them both, as he’s in supreme condition and is highly motivated to sign off his test career (temporarily or permanently hasn’t yet been determined) by playing well at the World Cup.
Beauden Barrett in action for the Blues against the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport
What appears to be holding him back is uncertainty: a lack of clarity about what he’s on the field to do and perhaps, too, he’s burdened himself with too much responsibility to deliver a gameplan that looks precisely like the one the coach wrote up on the whiteboard.
When Barrett was at his best in 2016 and 2017, former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen used to joke that they would spend all week building intricate plans, only for his first five to do his own thing once he was in the heat of battle.
It wouldn’t be true to say that Barrett was a law unto himself, it was just that he continually saw opportunities that no one else did and he backed himself to take them, and he had the speed, agility and awareness to destroy unsuspecting defences.
It was as if he was James Bond - Daniel Craig’s, mind - choosing his own methods to complete the mission, with Hansen doing a fair impression of Judy Dench as M, outwardly frosty and exasperated, but inwardly delighted and willing to indulge.
Barrett can become that player again - but it will take Leon MacDonald at the Blues then Ian Foster at the All Blacks to rid him of his obligation to be a strategic driver, and instead recast him as a licensed agent to thrill, where his only thought is to get the ball and run with it.
