Gregor Paul: How All Blacks playmaker Beauden Barrett can get his magic back

Beauden Barrett of the All Blacks looks on ahead of The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Argentina Pumas. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

OPINION

The view from the UK appears to be strong that while the All Blacks may not be broken, Beauden Barrett probably is.

A player so many in that part of the world used to revere has been deemed washed up, or at least is now considered such a fading force as to no longer be someone to fear.

A little bit of everyone must wonder if the British critics are right. It does feel like an age since Barrett was so effortlessly ripping up the best defences in the world game.

It's hard to recall how easily and often he used to wield such enormous influence in every test: how he'd make something miraculous happen by his ability to use his running game to such devastating effect.

So many tests between 2016 and 2017 were dominated by Barrett – who was this free spirit No 10 back then who managed to bring enough unorthodoxy to the role to be wildly unpredictable and yet somehow enough to conform to the All Blacks' expectations of delivering a cohesive game plan.

Maybe the gap between the All Blacks and the rest of the world in that period wasn't as large as results suggested, but the influence of just one special player in a special run of form made it appear as if New Zealand were out on their own.

But New Zealand have been caught by the peloton in the last few years and so rarely, if at all, has Barrett been the most obvious and undeniable influence in an emphatic All Blacks victory.

There have been small reminders in recent years that his skillset is vast. Last year he made a searing break against the Pumas and then threw an outrageous pass 20 metres across the field out the back of his hand. It was classic, brilliant, unstructured Barrett.

His pace doesn't appear to have left him either judging by the way last week he kicked downfield somewhat hopefully and not particularly accurately in Hamilton only to then reach an impressive top speed on the chase and just about pull off the impossible of regathering.

Barrett is clearly not broken, or an inferior athletic version of his former self. The foundation on which he built his name as the deadliest attacking force of the last decade is still there, but the problem that has arisen in the last few years has been finding the right role for him.

Rugby has become rigid and heavily formulaic, so defence-heavy as to redefine entirely what is required from an international first-five.

Beauden Barrett of New Zealand in the sin bin during the South Africa Springboks v New Zealand All Blacks rugby union test match at Ellis Park. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

It's a position now that demands a game-manager, a strategist and a pattern builder and probably too a particular body-shape and type of athlete who can scoot sideways as fast and nimbly as they can shoot forward.

The game has changed to the point where Barrett - skilled, brilliant and willing to back himself, can't quite bring what the position needs.

That he may no longer be the right player to wear No 10 for the All Blacks is more an indictment on the defensive trends that have infiltrated international rugby than it is on him.

He remains a stunning player, but the All Blacks need to find a way to use him so all his instinctive magic can be channelled.

In 2019 he was moved to fullback, partly to fulfil a strategic shift in thinking by All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen that he needed two playmakers in his backline at the World Cup that year.

But a little bit of that shift was driven by a creeping sense that the game had become so defensively orientated – so clustered and busy in the frontline – that Barrett was being too readily and easily nullified as a No 10.

His magic has always come from his running game – his ability to see space before anyone else does and then use his searing acceleration to exploit it and so defensive line speed became the way to shut him out of tests.

It's not that he can't kick, or manage a game plan, but these aren't his strengths and for most of 2020 and 2021 his difficulties were compounded by having to play behind an All Blacks pack that was too regularly losing the physical battles and restricting yet further the time and space in which the playmakers had to operate.

And even now that the All Blacks appear to have rediscovered a steeliness and hard edge thanks to the arrival of new forwards coach Jason Ryan, it doesn't feel like the right role for Barrett is as the team's starting No 10.

The time has come, with 11 tests before the World Cup, for the All Blacks to commit to Richie Mo'unga, who now looks better suited to the position than Barrett.

Mo'unga, perhaps just for the moment, is the better game manager, the sharper passer and the better equipped to produce the variety of run, pass, kick that the All Blacks playmaking role now demands.

But that raises the question of what to do with Barrett and what role he should be playing now and through to the next World Cup.

There's an argument to return him to fullback. He's as good as anyone in the team under the high ball and he's always relished the space that comes in the backfield.

It's certainly an option and is a way to keep him involved for 80 minutes.

But it seems the better place for now is the bench and unleashing him in the last 30 minutes, nominally as a fullback, but with a roving commission to pop up where he feels like, with strong encouragement to inject himself as a first-receiver on occasion.

It was as an impact player that Barrett first made his mark in test rugby. Between 2013 and 2015, he was the master at producing the high-impact half hour: of coming into a game that was maybe stuck and using his pace, his vision and willingness to try things no one else could, to break things open.

Being a little freer to express himself and operate on the edges of the team pattern suited him better and while he may not like the idea of once again being handed a cameo rather than being billed as the main attraction, it's the best way to use him.