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What to do with Beauden Barrett as Blues hit post-championship free fall
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The Blues are clearly in trouble on the post-championship fall despite being third on the ladder.
They were hammered 47-24 by the Hurricanes on Saturday night, the highest-ever score conceded to the Wellington-based franchise.
The championship window likely closed in 2025 and 2026 is just further evidence that they need to blow it up and rebuild. They are some way off the Chiefs and Hurricanes, and that means they won’t be winning the title any time soon.
They captured the championship in 2024 after coming excruciatingly close in 2022. It had been coming for a number of years and they finally made the breakthrough. They’d come a long way since the emptiness of the 2010s that saw all the other New Zealand teams win championships.
But the bulk of that roster from two years ago is churning over, with key names like Akira Ioane, Mark Tele’a, Harry Plummer having already left and more set to depart this season in Hoskins Sotutu, Dalton Papalii, Stephen Perofeta and AJ Lam.
The ironic part of it all is they won the title in 2024 without star recruit Beauden Barrett, who went on sabbatical with Toyota Verblitz that year. After spending a lot to land the big name No.10 and pry him away from the Hurricanes, they won the competition without him.
The reality is Barrett hasn’t really delivered value for the Blues on the field given the price tag, and in 2026 is basically tanking their season. The evidence is smacking them in the face that they need to change there, but he still has another year to run on his contract.
They are stuck between a rock and a hard place anchored to Barrett. They will say goodbye to Perofeta at season’s end and have a lot of stock invested in young 20-year-old Rico Simpson. The depth at 10 is very thin next season and Simpson is at least a couple of years away from being a starter.
Barrett has never really been a great game manager. His assets were always out-of-the-box magic, genius plays against the run of play, speed, and a lethal running game, which are not there anymore.
He rarely turns the screws on opposition through well thought out territorial management. It never feels like he’s two steps ahead of the opposition, his kicking game is wildly sporadic from the backfield. Often long and uncontested, Barrett is happy to gift the opposition a lot of possession.
Then he’ll do something high risk that he doesn’t have the magic for anymore. A dink chip that never gets close to regathering. A daring run that ends with a costly turnover.
There are also many issues at the Blues that aren’t Barrett’s responsibility, on Saturday night the lineout fell apart, but when your No.10 is also compounding the problems, you are on a yacht with no sail and no hope of going anywhere.
The Blues can ride out Barrett’s contract for one more year, but they won’t catch the Crusaders, Chiefs or Hurricanes anytime soon. A full re-build is required starting with the halves.
Of concern is the fact that the Blues have no first fives signed to their WTG group. They really should be recruiting hard in this space.
Mason Verster (Crusaders), Rios Tasmania (Chiefs), Thompson Tukapua (Hurricanes) are all worth going after. They are all New Zealand age grade selections from the 2024 schoolboys crop who all missed out on U20 selection this year. These three targets above are as good as prospects as Simpson, if not better.
The Chiefs have gone in for a younger No.10 Jamie Viljoen, the Canes are invested in Will Cole and the Crusaders have only just begun the Taha Kemara era. They lost Harry Inch to the Warriors a year ago.
The Blues should be stockpiling at the position as Simpson is no guarantee, taking a leaf out of the Hurricanes’ book.
When Beauden Barrett left the Hurricanes, they went and signed two potential 10s from the 2019 New Zealand schoolboys side. The starter that year, Aidan Morgan, and a fullback named Ruben Love. The risk paid off in Ruben Love while Morgan decided to move overseas.
Comparing the Canes to the Blues currently, they have five No.10 options on the roster and it’s a good thing they have. Ruben Love, Callum Harkin, Brett Cameron, Harry Godfrey, and Lucas Cashmore. That depth has been needed with up to three of them injured at the same time.
The Blues are currently banking on one prospect, Rico Simpson, for their future.
The halfback stocks in the 2025 U20 crop for New Zealand was the strongest in a generation.
Dylan Pledger is not going to be lured north from the Highlanders, while Charlie Sinton is unlikely to move from the Chiefs with Xavier Roe going overseas. At the Hurricanes, Jai Tamati is starring down the prospect of the next 10 years behind Cam Roigard.
Tamati is in the Hurricanes WTG for 2026, but perhaps a full-time squad deal can lure him to the Blues. He is the closest No.9 of the group in playing style to Aaron Smith.
The Blues have upped their game in recruitment this decade, moving to a nation-wide search for talent. The Crusaders and Chiefs have being doing this for awhile, but the Blues had resisted. Once they entered the market, they successfully began raiding the Crusaders academy for prospects around the turn of the 2020s.
This escalation in the recruitment war landed them Anton Segner, who is having his best year, and lock Sam Darry, who became an All Black. This year they pinched hooker Eli Oudenryn, who is a Dane Coles-like rake, and brought home centre James Cameron who is a home run signing. All four of them were earmarked to be Crusaders.
New loose forward starter Malachi Wrampling-Alec was snatched away from the Chiefs and already looks like a boom signing.
The future back row looks the best part of the roster with Wrampling-Alec, Segner and Torian Barnes. They have Che Clark also, who has come through the Blues and New Zealand age-grade system.
There are talks that the Blues are keen on Ardie Savea, another big name like Barrett that won’t live up to the price tag in all likelihood. Instead, the Blues should go after a young openside like Johnny Lee at the Crusaders to add to their stable of looseies, currently on a WTG contract.
He’s being shafted by Rob Penney for the Leicester Fainga’anuku experiment right now. Lee is a future All Black and the Crusaders are potentially dropping the ball. They also went for the splash signing of Oli Mathis, making for a crowded room at openside.
The Blues championship window is done, but their new recruitment strategy can re-build the club fairly quickly if they hit the right position groups, starting with the halves as priority number one.
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