'Champion guy' Barrett's short stay can be mutually beneficial to Leinster and his own career
Leinster’s Conan Barrett Andrew Pic: Jordie
Jordie Barrett’s time at Leinster can be mutually beneficial to the All Blacks star and the players around him, attack coach Tyler Bleyendaal believes.
The versatile New Zealand back made his Leinster debut as a half-time replacement at inside centre to help break open his new team’s opening Champions Cup pool clash at Bristol Bears last Sunday evening.
Barrett, who joined Leo Cullen’s squad after the Autumn Nations Series for the rest of the season, has reunited with former Hurricanes backs coach Bleyendaal, who replaced Ireland-bound Andrew Goodman at Leinster during the summer and the former Munster fly-half thinks the recently-arrived superstar can gain as much from his new team-mates as they will from working alongside a world-class player.
“He has a natural aura about him,” Bleyendaal said. “He's played for the All Blacks for a long time now. He's achieved at a high level and you almost just place him in with other high achievers and high-level players and they forever just learn off each other.
“Like Jordie will be learning a lot when we talk about what are the players going to learn off him. He'll be sitting there soaking in a lot of stuff from this environment, from the players that play international rugby and even the academy guys coming through, just the way they do things. You learn and you appreciate different aspects.
“And similarly, I think they look at Jordan and go ‘well, what a special talent’. They wouldn't have seen a lot of him in person. But I think quickly they'll see how hard he works, how hard he works off the ball, his ability to communicate and, and make things easier for players around him.
“A great player can always give time and space to guys around him and, yeah, I think they'll learn to just learn about him and how he plays and they're going to start appreciating a few of those things.”
Bleyendaal described Barrett as “just a champion guy” and “a really nice fella” off the field and was pleased with his impact on debut at Ashton Gate as he dovetailed excellently with fly-half Sam Prendergast to transform a 7-7 half-time stalemate into a 35-12 bonus-point victory.
“The parts of the game he added to were quite simple where his decision making and his ability to run hard or use the skill sets were quite clear, and he just did them well, I think, and probably built confidence on that.
“He started getting his hands on the ball a lot and linking up with the other players in the back line a lot of the time. So, yeah, the game was a weird one. We worked hard the first half and we defended a lot. We probably expended a lot of energy, but so did Bristol and I think the guys in the second half were able to find some opportunity on the back of that.”