Scott Barrett: the Pungarehu lock who scored on debut, captained the All Blacks and came back in 2026

The middle of the three Barrett All Blacks is the one who became captain. Scott Barrett, a 1.97-metre lock from the Pungarehu dairy farm, scored a try on debut in Chicago in 2016, lifted three Super Rugby trophies as Crusaders captain, led the All Blacks in 20 Tests across 2024 and 2025, and then spent most of 2026 recovering from back surgery while his brothers played on. Now 32, with 91 Tests, he is back in the engine room for the Nations Championship tour, and forwards coach Jason Ryan says his return has put "some real power" back in the scrum.

Where he comes from

Scott Kevin Barrett was born in New Plymouth on 20 November 1993, one of Kevin and Robyn Barrett's eight children. His father, Kevin "Smiley" Barrett, played 167 games as a forward for Taranaki between 1986 and 1999 and 14 for the Hurricanes, and once wrote in a match programme that when he finished playing he was off to breed some All Blacks. His mother Robyn was a New Zealand Under 18 basketballer and a netballer.

Scott was six when the family moved to Ballinacree in County Meath, Ireland, in January 2000, where Kevin managed a farm and played for the Buccaneers club in Athlone. Scott, Beauden and Kane went to St Fiach's National School and learned Gaelic football before the family came home in April 2001. "It was the best thing we ever did," Kevin told the Irish Times in 2017. Back at Pungarehu, Kevin coached the school team, 84 pupils strong, with Kane, Beauden and Scott in it, to three McLeod Shields in a row.

Richie McCaw, asked before the 2019 World Cup how one farm produced three All Blacks, pointed to boys running barefoot across frosty coastal paddocks and said: "It's often the character, when the heat comes on." Scott has his own explanation for why he grew so much bigger than Beauden and Jordie. "I think I probably won the race to the table," he joked on the All Blacks' Inside the Black Jersey series in October 2026. Beauden ran cross-country at primary school; Scott spent his summers fishing and in the gym with Kane, and the backyard cricket games, he says, were where Jordie learned to love contact, charging in off a long run-up every time his older brothers wound him up.

School and university

Like Kane before him and Jordie after, Scott went to Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth, his father's old school, and the Crusaders' profile describes him as "a standout performer in their First XV". He played for New Zealand Under 20 at the 2013 Junior World Championship in France, making three appearances. RUGBE found no published record of a New Zealand Schools selection.

Unlike Beauden, who stayed in Taranaki and went to the Hurricanes, Scott left the province after school to study at Lincoln University, south of Christchurch. Lincoln University is still the club listed against his name in the All Blacks' records, and the move put him in Canterbury's system, and in the path of a coach named Scott Robertson.

Canterbury and the Crusaders

Barrett's break came in June 2014, when a Crusaders side without its internationals played a midweek match against the touring England team. When Super Rugby resumed and Sam Whitelock and Luke Romano were injured, he was named on the bench against the Blues on 5 July 2014 and came on in the 74th minute of a 21-13 win for his first full Crusaders cap. He played 19 games for Canterbury between 2014 and 2016, and was part of the Crusaders' full squad from 2015.

By 2017 he had replaced Romano as the regular locking partner of the new captain, Whitelock. He missed the Crusaders' match against the touring British and Irish Lions through injury but started all three knockout games, including the final in Johannesburg on 5 August 2017, where the Crusaders beat the Lions of South Africa 25-17. Titles followed in 2018 and 2019, and in November 2019, with Whitelock off on sabbatical and Kieran Read and Ryan Crotty gone, Robertson made Barrett the Crusaders captain. "He's got an incredible engine, he plays well each week," Robertson told reporters. "The boys will follow him."

He did not get to lead them that year. Barrett hurt his foot in an internal game before Super Rugby Aotearoa began in June 2020, needed toe surgery and missed the whole campaign; Codie Taylor led the side to the title in his place. Barrett was back to captain the Crusaders to the 2021 Aotearoa title, 24-13 over the Chiefs in Christchurch on 8 May. On a wet night at Eden Park in June 2022 he captained them to a 21-7 win over a Blues side captained by Beauden, which Wikipedia records as believed to be the first major final with brothers as the two captains. A third title as captain came in Hamilton in June 2023, 25-20 over the Chiefs, in Whitelock's last game for the club.

The Crusaders count four years of Barrett's captaincy and more than 100 appearances; Wikipedia's tally is 132 games and 100 points to October 2026. With David Havili as captain in 2025, Barrett started at lock in the 16-12 final win over the Chiefs in Christchurch, the club's 13th title. Robertson and Barrett, in RNZ's count, won seven Super Rugby titles together, and Barrett is in the Crusaders' 2027 squad under new head coach Scott Hansen.

Taranaki

Barrett's early provincial rugby was all for Canterbury, but he has been a Taranaki player since 2021 and has worn the amber and black three times. The first was in 2021. The second came five years later, on 27 September 2026, against Hawke's Bay in Napier, his first game of any kind for ten months. He played an hour, and allblacks.com reported that former All Blacks halfback Brad Weber, a Hawke's Bay man, watched him do damage against the Magpies. A week later he and Beauden were picked together in a Taranaki side for the first time, against Wellington at Stadium Taranaki, on the afternoon Jared Proffit played his 100th game for the province.

The All Blacks: a try in Chicago

Barrett was not in the original squad for the 2016 northern tour; he joined it as an injury replacement. By the first Test, in Chicago on 5 November 2016, Whitelock and Brodie Retallick were injured and Romano had gone home after a family bereavement, so Jerome Kaino started at lock. Barrett replaced him early in the second half and scored, Beauden kicking the conversion. The All Blacks lost 40-29, Ireland's first win over New Zealand, 111 years after the two sides first met. Barrett started against Italy in Rome a week later and came off the bench against Ireland in Dublin and France in Paris, playing all four Tests of the tour.

In June 2017 Steve Hansen picked Scott, Beauden and Jordie in the same squad for Samoa and the Lions, the first three brothers in All Blacks history to be selected together. Scott came off the bench in all three Lions Tests, playing 15 minutes in total behind Retallick and Whitelock. Against Australia in Dunedin his only touch of the ball set up Beauden's winning try, and against South Africa at Albany on 16 September he came on at blindside flanker after Liam Squire was concussed and scored in a 57-0 win. He played 12 Tests that year, plus the non-Test games against the Barbarians and a French XV.

2018 to 2023: tries, a bronze, a silver and two red cards

On 9 June 2018 at Eden Park the three Barretts started a Test together for the first time, against France, and Scott played every minute of all three Tests in the series, finishing as man of the match in the 49-14 third Test in Dunedin. He was on the bench when Retallick returned for the first two Bledisloe Tests, but when Retallick was hurt again he started the last four Rugby Championship matches, and in Pretoria on 6 October 2018 he scored in the dying minutes as the All Blacks beat South Africa 32-30, Richie Mo'unga kicking the winning conversion after Ardie Savea's late try.

The first red card came in Perth on 10 August 2019. Starting his first Test of the year, and by Wikipedia's account short of match fitness after injury, he was sent off in the 39th minute for a shoulder charge to the neck of Wallabies captain Michael Hooper, the fourth All Black sent off in a Test after Cyril Brownlie, Colin Meads and Sonny Bill Williams. The All Blacks were 12-13 down when he left and lost 47-26, the most points they have ever conceded in a Test. He was suspended for three weeks.

He was back for the World Cup in Japan, scoring in the opening win over South Africa in Yokohama. Against Canada in Oita the three brothers became the first trio to start a World Cup match for New Zealand, and all three scored in a 63-0 win. Hansen then started him at blindside flanker in place of Sam Cane for the semi-final against England, a three-lock plan the coach later admitted was a mistake; Barrett was replaced at half-time and England won 19-7. He started the bronze final win over Wales.

By 2022 he was starting every Test he played, moving between lock and the blindside. He played his 50th Test against Ireland in Dunedin on 9 July 2022, scored at Ellis Park in the 35-23 win over South Africa that August, and scored again at Murrayfield in November, his seventh and most recent Test try. The second red card came at Twickenham on 25 August 2023, two weeks before the World Cup, when he was yellow-carded in the 14th minute and sent off in the 39th as South Africa won 35-7, at the time the heaviest defeat in All Blacks history. On RUGBE's records he is the only All Black sent off in two Tests. At the World Cup in France he started five matches, including the quarter-final win over Ireland, the semi-final against Argentina and the 12-11 loss to South Africa in the Paris final.

Captain

Robertson took over the All Blacks for 2024, and on 24 June he named Scott Barrett captain in his first squad, with Ardie Savea and Jordie Barrett as vice-captains. "He's highly regarded by the refs. He's very well respected. He's our lineout caller," Robertson told RNZ, adding that Barrett had "won a lot of big games and big moments". Barrett had taken some time to say yes, and said the hesitation came from respect for the role: "It's a job that's probably going to require every little bit of me." He led the team for the first time in the 16-15 win over England in Dunedin on 6 July 2024, his 70th cap, becoming by RUGBE's count of the match records the 74th man to captain the All Blacks in a Test. (Published figures differ: the All Blacks' own release that week said 81st and the Museum profile says 68th; RUGBE's reconciliation of the Test records found both ordinals wrong.)

He captained all 11 Tests he played in 2024: two wins over England and one over Fiji, two losses in South Africa, Bledisloe wins in Sydney and Wellington, then a northern tour of wins over England at Twickenham and Ireland in Dublin, a one-point loss to France in Paris and a win over Italy in Turin. In 2025 he captained nine more: the 31-27 first Test win over France in Dunedin, a split in Argentina that included the Pumas' first win over the All Blacks on home soil, a 24-17 win over South Africa at Eden Park followed a week later by a 43-10 defeat in Wellington, the heaviest in All Blacks history, then wins over Australia in Perth, Ireland in Chicago and Wales in Cardiff either side of a loss to England at Twickenham. His record as captain stands at 14 wins and six losses from 20 Tests, and the Bledisloe Cup stayed in New Zealand in both years.

2026: surgery and a way back

Robertson left the job in January 2026 after New Zealand Rugby's end-of-season review, and Dave Rennie took over. Barrett had been given a non-playing sabbatical for the 2026 Super Rugby season, arranged to get his body right for the 2027 World Cup after a run of lower-limb injuries, including an ankle problem. Early in the year a tight hip turned into a calf that would not fire when he ran. The cause was a bulging disc pressing on a nerve, which in his words "depowered my left side", and after four weeks of waiting for it to settle he had a microdiscectomy at the end of May, ruling him out for up to five months. He missed the end of the Crusaders' season, the three July Tests and all four Tests against South Africa. On 22 June Rennie named Savea as his captain.

"It was a challenging sort of 10 months, probably a challenging year, to be honest, for me personally," Barrett told 1News in September, saying Robertson's exit had weighed on him as the coach's captain. On losing the captaincy: "There was several conversations with Dave." The decision, he said, was Rennie's, "a different direction with Ardie", and he had put it behind him. He followed the South Africa series, he said, as a fan cheering on his brothers.

He came back through Taranaki and was recalled for the Bledisloe Cup. He expected to start on the bench at Eden Park and admitted to being a little nervous when the team was named with him in the starting XV. He lasted 71 minutes of the 50-19 win on 10 October, his first Test since November 2025, alongside Beauden and Jordie once more. "If your lungs are hurting, you're in the right place," he said afterwards. In the 43-21 win in Sydney a week later he and Fabian Holland made more carries and tackles than anyone else in the tight five, and Ryan credited his return with adding "some real power" to the scrum. On 27 October he was named in the 36-man squad for Scotland, Wales and England, with 91 caps.

Style and standing

The Museum's profile on allblacks.com calls him "powerful, composed, and a natural leader". When Robertson made him captain, the qualities he listed were the lineout calling, the respect of referees and a record in big games. Barrett has scored seven tries in 91 Tests, and four of his Test starts have come at blindside flanker. Beauden, after the Eden Park Test in October, said that having Scott back in the side "always feels really good but this one was super special".

Off the field

Barrett studied at Lincoln University after leaving school. The Museum's profile records that he is a keen hunter, fisherman and surfer, and his management agency notes that he helps out on the family dairy farm.

Where he is now

Barrett, who turns 33 on 20 November, is in Edinburgh with the All Blacks under tour captain Codie Taylor, and RNZ expects him to pack down alongside Holland against Scotland on Sunday morning New Zealand time, with Wales and England to follow. He is in the Crusaders' squad for 2027, the World Cup year his sabbatical was designed to prepare him for.

Career at a glance

Test figures are from RUGBE's match-by-match All Blacks data to 17 October 2026. Club and provincial figures are from Wikipedia, updated October 2026.