Alfie Barbeary’s ball-carrying skills up there with back-row greats, says Johann van Graan
Johann van Graan says that the commitment and desire of Alfie Barbeary’s ball-carrying reminds him of Duane Vermeulen and CJ Stander, two back-rowers who have been gain-line weapons in the Test arena.
Van Graan, Barbeary’s head coach at Bath, worked with Vermeulen, now a back-to-back World Cup champion, in the Springboks set-up and then joined forces with Stander, a 51-cap international for Ireland, at Munster.
Barbeary has played 12 Premiership games for Bath this season, as well as four more in the Champions Cup, and could have made England’s Six Nations squad were it not for the untimely suspension that followed his red card against Racing 92 in January.
Instead, the 23-year-old had to make do with a start for England A against Portugal, but an impressive campaign continued at Sandy Park on Saturday evening. He registered 15 carries and beat six defenders, according to Stats Perform, as well as forcing decisive breakdown turnovers as Bath ousted Exeter Chiefs 26-14.
That bonus-point win, punctuated by tries from Barbeary, Ben Spencer, Max Ojomoh and Miles Reid, brings them to another pivotal encounter against Saracens on Friday night, with second hosting third at the Rec. Van Graan, who first noticed Barbeary in a tour-de-force for Wasps against Toulouse in 2022, was full of praise.
“When I started at Bath I took my time over the first three months to look at what we needed,” Van Graan explained. “Two things came up, specifically. One was leadership experience and the other was ball-carrying. Alfie, from a ball-carrying point of view, stood out to me. We approached him and, unfortunately, what happened at Wasps happened at Wasps and he came to us.
‘Alfie has this incredible ability to shake off defenders’
“He’s a guy who wants the ball in his hands and the biggest compliment I can give Alfie is that Duane Vermeulen and CJ Stander are two players I have coached who wanted the ball in their hands. If you think of the hard yards that CJ Stander made in Test matches for Ireland and big games for Munster, Alfie also makes the hard yards. He’s the guy who takes the first pass off nine into a defensive wall. You’ve got to have something inside yourself to want to run at that. And it’s easy to do it once. It’s not that easy to do it 10 or 15 times. Then he has this incredible ability to shake off defenders.
“On the other side of the ball, he’s made some very big poaches for us in the last few weeks. Both sides of the ball, he’s so valuable and he’s an important player for us. All credit has to go to our medical, performance and nutrition teams for keeping him on the pitch. He came here with injures and had that horrific one to his knee against Leicester [on debut] – but since then he’s taken a few knocks, like against Gloucester at Kingsholm when he was hit off the ball, and he keeps coming. He’s an important ball-carrier for our side.”
Vermeulen, a giant of the sport, announced his retirement last November, at the age of 37, in the afterglow of a second successive World Cup triumph with South Africa. Stander, who toured New Zealand with the British and Irish Lions in 2017, had bowed out in 2021.
Direct comparisons to either of those are still hasty at this stage of Barbeary’s career, but he has always had a knack for producing moments that swing momentum. This Premiership season, according to Stats Perform, has beaten five defenders per 80 minutes, a tally bettered only by Jasper Wiese (5.4) and Zach Mercer (6.5) among players to have amassed more than 600 minutes. Using the same criteria, Barbeary sits third for carries per 80 minutes, with 14.7. Wiese (21.3), Mercer (17.5) and Jack Clement (14.8) top the charts.
Given Saracens have a choice of brawny ball-carriers to deploy at the base of their scrum, with Tom Willis and Billy Vunipola sharing the starting role this season, Bath will be grateful for Barbeary’s determination.
“Everybody has their own strengths, so I’m not comparing him to Duane or CJ but I am comparing [Barbeary’s] carrying ability off nine [from a pass off the scrum-half] and his willingness to come back for more,” Van Graan added. “It’s easy to take one or two but to come 10, 12, 15 through that channel takes something from the inside. One thing is the ability, the other is the hunger to run in there. And he’s done magnificently well.”
