Hurricanes planning to play without Beauden Barrett?

The Hurricanes completed a successful pre-season yesterday with wins over the Crusaders and Blues following a runners-up showing at the Brisbane Tens. The team was notably without any appearance by superstar Beauden Barrett.

His absence due to planned leave has limited any chance of getting pre-season minutes under his belt and the Hurricanes are now weighing up whether to ease Barrett into the Super Rugby season.

“He’ll come to Australia on Sunday and on to Johannesburg on Monday. He’ll be with us Monday night,” said head coach Chris Boyd following the team’s fixture over the Blues.

“But when we discussed what that might look like for him, he hasn’t played any pre-season minutes, so he’ll come off the bench probably in Pretoria. We may yet choose to make that one of his All Black rest weeks, we’ll wait and see how that pans out.”

Boyd confirmed he will not start against the Bulls in Pretoria and may miss the match altogether.

“We try to fit into a 40-60-80 [minutes] return to play, but obviously you can’t do it with everybody. When you’ve got two or three guys in the same area you can’t rest them all at the same time.

“Either way we’ll get their minutes in return to play right as requested by the All Blacks, and we’ll worry about their down weeks as we get along through the competition.”

Barrett’s planned rest will open the door for either Ihaia West or Jackson Garden-Bachop to start for their new club, having joined the franchise from the Blues and Rebels respectively.

“Either Ihaia or Jackson will start at 10 against the Bulls,” said Boyd when asked about West’s readiness to step into a starting role if required. “I’ve always had a lot of time for Ihaia. Because he was in the Hurricanes region, I’ve been watching him play since he was under-16s. With some optimistic support around him, I’m picking Ihaia is going to do a good job for us this year.”

The Hurricanes open their season with a long road trip, facing the Bulls in Pretoria before heading to Argentina to face the Jaguares. The side is due to leave from Sydney on Saturday.

Squad: Toby Smith, Chris Eves, Ben May, Fraser Armstrong, Alex Fidow, Ricky Riccitelli, James O’Rielly, Sam Lousi, Murray Douglas, Michael Fatialofa, Vaea Fifita, Brad Shields (c), Ardie Savea, Gareth Evans, Blade Thomson, TJ Perenara, Jamie Booth, Beauden Barrett, Ihaia West, Ngani Laumape, Matt Proctor, Vince Aso, Wes Goosen, Julian Savea, Ben Lam, Jackson Garden-Bachop, Jonah Lowe.