Berrick Barnes has role in Reds revival
* Wayne Smith
* From: The Australian
* March 08, 2010 11:01AM
IT was always the hope that Berrick Barnes would turn around Queensland rugby this year - and that's precisely how it has turned out.
But what wasn't envisaged was that he would have such a profound effect on his home state while wearing the sky blue of NSW.
When Barnes made the jaw-dropping decision to switch to the Waratahs last July, it was as though the last flickering light in Queensland rugby had been extinguished. Even the true believers sighed, shrugged their shoulders and turned their backs, all hope gone.
The Reds seemingly had so few quality players, so few inspiring leaders and then to lose the one player whose mere presence had hinted at an admittedly far-distance revival was too much even for the faithful.
But what no one could know then was that it was in leaving that Barnes would perform his greatest service to Queensland.
His departure triggered a media storm which in turn prompted the then chairman Peter Lewis, no stranger to nasty headlines in the business as well as the sports section of the paper, to offer his resignation.
It was an offer he did not expect would be accepted for the very good reason that he almost single-handedly was keeping the Queensland Rugby Union financially afloat.
Certainly if the union had been relying on the fund-raising efforts of all the other board members, Queensland rugby would have sunk beneath the waves years earlier.
Yet, stunningly, the board decided to send a disbelieving Lewis on his way, along with chief executive Ken Freer whose resignation had been accepted some months earlier.
That changed everything. Under Lewis, Phil Mooney had been assured of retaining the Reds coaching job, even if there was carnage all about him as both of his assistant coaches, the team manager and the high performance director all were summarily dispatched in the immediate aftermath of Barnes's departure.
But when Lewis fell on his sword, the one man who had stood between the embattled coach and the howling mob was lost and one of the first actions of new chairman Rod McCall was to rescind the earlier vote of confidence in Mooney and announce that the Reds would have a new coach in 2010.
Leaving the quickly-installed Ewen McKenzie to attend to Queensland's football, McCall turned his attention to Queensland's finances. As he and new chief executive Jim Carmichael were to discover when they peeled back the carpet, the floorboards beneath were riddled with termites.
They could have gently lowered the carpet back into place and tiptoed gently for the next couple of years in the hope that the whole structure wouldn't collapse upon itself but instead they called in the exterminator. Or should that be The Terminator -- John O'Neill?
Whatever, it took guts for any QRU official to appeal to the ARU boss for help. One thing is certain: had Lewis remained in charge, it would never have happened. The QRU would have tried to find another way, any other way of extricating itself from its troubles.
So, for better or for worse, Barnes triggered the course of action that led irreversibly to the ARU bail-out of Queensland rugby.
Meanwhile, back on the field where the real business of the QRU needed to be done, McKenzie was working a minor miracle.
Ever the hard-headed realist, the new Reds coach realised he had to fashion a basic playing style out of the talent at his disposal.
Had Barnes been his first option at five-eighth, McKenzie surely would have utilised his kicking skills to play a largely field-position game.
Think back to the way the Reds beat the Blues in Albany last year when Barnes bossed the game. No doubt McKenzie would have aimed at a more consistent application of that effective, if limited tactical approach.
With Barnes out of the equation, however, McKenzie was faced with two alternatives: either try to make Quade Cooper into something he wasn't or else work with the fact that while Cooper's kicking game was barely adequate, his passing and running skills were sublime.
It would be a massive over-simplification to suggest McKenzie built an entire Reds game around one player. Worse than that, it would simply be wrong. But there is no doubt that Cooper was the starting point and that from there McKenzie then had to find a way that allowed his young playmaker to express his skills while still playing well with others and sticking within the confines of the overall team approach.
Just how good a job McKenzie has done in that regard was evident to all in Hamilton on Friday night.
Let's not get unduly excited by the fact the Reds have won two of their four matches to date this season. They were in precisely the same position at the corresponding stage of the 2004 campaign and finished third-last. In 2008 and 2009, they won two of their opening five matches and bottomed out then as well. There is, as McKenzie sternly warned his players in the shed in Hamilton, still a long, long way to go.
Still, the Reds and Queensland rugby are deeply indebted to Berrick Barnes for triggering the revolution that has led to this dramatic turnaround. Without him, who knows where Queensland rugby might be today.
That said, no one in Queensland rugby is missing him. Not yet at least. Whether Barnes is missing Queensland . . . well, that might be another story.
