For a long time, it was hard not to wonder how Richie Mo’unga might go without Beauden Barrett in the same backline.
I think of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, for instance, when despite Mo’unga being the primary playmaker in theory, the ball invariably ended up in Barrett’s hands.
The All Blacks coaches might have been picking Barrett at fullback, but his teammates treated him as the first five-eighth. If Barrett called the ball he got it. Even if he didn’t want it, the players seemed to operate under the apprehension that if they simply gave it to Beauden then he’d conjure something out of nothing.
Ultimately, it undermined Mo’unga’s status as the guy running the side and failed to give the All Blacks the imagined advantage of playing two pivots. Far from creating indecision in the defensive side, it muddled everything the All Blacks were trying to achieve.
(Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
If Blues first-five Harry Plummer were to have a chat with Mo’unga this week, I’d be interested in being a fly on the wall.
The defending Super Rugby Pacific champion Blues have started their 2025 campaign 0-2, losing to Chiefs and Highlanders sides they’re demonstrably better than on paper.
Hilariously, I read somewhere that maybe the missing ingredient for the Blues this season is Akira Ioane. I honestly thought his presence in the side was a permanent impediment, but there you go.
Sam Darry’s absence is unfortunate but, if we look at what’s substantively changed at the Blues from last year to this, it’s the return of Barrett from sabbatical in Japan.
I’m a huge Barrett fan. I covered the Hurricanes when he was in his pomp and regard it as having been a huge privilege to see such a fine player in action.
Such was my regard for Barrett that I made sure I got to games early just so I could watch him warm up.
In the years since, though, I saw him become a casualty of various All Blacks coaches’ inability to make a hard decision.
It was easier to pick Barrett and Mo’unga and hope for the best. Just as we had Damian McKenzie and Barrett fighting over the same crumbs for much of last year.
To Scott Robertson’s credit, he eventually dispensed with McKenzie as first five-eighth and Barrett the fullback, benching the former in favour of giving control to the latter.
Given I called for that to happen for, seemingly, months on end, I was quite enthusiastic about the subsequent results. Others might argue the change wasn’t that transformative.
Either way, for as long as New Zealand Rugby (NZR) decline to look at amending their eligibility criteria – and pave the way for Mo’unga to be picked from Japan – Barrett and McKenzie are the only candidates to be the All Blacks’ first-five. Especially given Plummer’s future now lies in France.
And yet here we are, two rounds into Super Rugby, with McKenzie playing fullback for the unbeaten Chiefs and Barrett wearing No.15 for the winless Blues.
There’s a few things to be said about that, not least that McKenzie is actually a pretty good fullback and was a genuine option there at All Blacks level for a while, until an untidy performance in Dublin (from memory) caused Steve Hansen to reconsider.
(Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Barrett, meanwhile, is an elite athlete of great skill, who has used that ability to do a serviceable, sometimes excellent, job at the back.
Super Rugby Pacific, with the best will in the world, is little more than an apparatus by which to either select or prepare the All Blacks for Test duty. On that basis, it makes no sense for McKenzie and Barrett to be playing fullback for their franchises.
Sure, it might suit the immediate personnel needs of the respective teams, but it’s doing nothing for the All Blacks.
If I go back to where I started this column, I always contended that the selectors should pick Barrett or Mo’unga and be done with it. Just as I admired Robertson last year for installing Barrett at 10 and giving McKenzie a role off the bench.
And so it is with the Blues.
In the national interest, I think it benefits us all if Barrett is the Blues’ first five-eighth.
It’s just that, actually, the greatest benefit to the Blues is having Plummer play there. As long as Barrett’s not around for company, as was the case last year.
The Blues should still do well this season, but what if they don’t? What if this run of unflattering performances and results continues?
Can you bench Barrett or leave him out of a 23 entirely? Is there a point in that sort of situation when NZR would intervene and demand Barrett be on the park?
I don’t see the Plummer and Barrett thing being a great success, because Barrett and McKenzie and Barrett and Mo’unga wasn’t either.
I’m more intrigued to see how long Blues coach Vern Cotter will persist with both playmakers and what might happen if he makes a decision in the best interests of the franchise, but maybe not the All Blacks.
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