John Barclay is sat in his living room using one arm to cradle a poorly infant and the other to block a toddler from tugging decorations off the Christmas tree. Becoming acquainted with every ounce of Duane Vermeulen’s 19 stones must suddenly seem a far less painful way to spend an afternoon.
Keeping up with the young ones is increasingly Barclay’s thing, however, at work as well as home. He only turned 30 in September, but having been in the world of professional rugby since the age of 17, the back-rower now ranks as an elder statesman in Scotland and Scarlets sides that on the whole are relatively green.
The role suits a man who has always carried himself as impressively as he does the ball. It is also a two-way thing, with Barclay thriving on the energy and lack of fear that now characterise the national team set-up in particular.
“The culture and environment are spot on,” says a player who has seen every part of the spectrum since being involved in his first training squad five months after he left school. “The importance of winning and what you have to do to achieve that are never underestimated. But we’re also encouraged to have fun, have a beer together and relax away from it.
“I make a point of chatting to the younger guys, not just from a rugby point of view. I always remember the guys who came and spoke to me when I was 17 and joined Glasgow — those words go a long way.
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“Don’t get me wrong; I have my moments of being a bit of a child as well. I can be quite serious with rugby, but away from the pitch, away from meetings, I like to try and wind the young guys up as much as I can. It’s a lot of fun. I’m not 18 any more, so I try and enjoy the game and everything around it that bit more.”
It’s not hard to figure out why. Between 2008 and the end of Andy Robinson’s reign in late 2012, Barclay was close to an automatic pick for Scotland, but made just one start under Scott Johnson and didn’t feature at all in the first 14 months of Vern Cotter.
The emergence of a fresh crop of back-row talent tells half the story, but it’s also clear that Barclay’s decision to miss the 2014 summer tour to undergo surgery on a long-standing shoulder problem didn’t go down well. Even if that ridiculously drawn-out trip would have had Odysseus trying to make the dog eat his passport, the net result was that Barclay didn’t add to his 43 caps until a couple of token runouts ahead of the World Cup.
“I wasn’t picked [for the tournament itself] and I thought, ‘well that must be that, I’ll crack on’. I’d genuinely got my head around it, and was enjoying being down here, having a bit more time off, being able to take the kids on holidays.
“Two years ago, I genuinely feel I was playing the best rugby I’ve ever played and I wasn’t getting picked, so that’s when I made my peace with it. It’s been a bit of a turnaround this year.
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“I always appreciated it, always loved playing for Scotland, but it’s a bit different now when I’ve had those three years without playing. My eldest son is at an age when he’ll remember coming to Murrayfield and coming onto the pitch after games. That’s special. I’m probably more proud of getting back in than I am of getting my first cap.”
Cotter’s official explanation for not selecting him was that he felt other opensides offered more in attack. Barclay, who has started all but one game [Georgia] in 2016, doesn’t feel he is doing anything drastically different, but a potential get-out for the coach is that he still isn’t picking him at seven. Just once has Barclay played his time-served position, against Japan in Tokyo.
There have been seven starts at blindside, and one at No 8, the shirt he tends to wear with Scarlets to accommodate James
Davies.
“There’s a lot of competition, and guys who can play a couple of positions. Coaches change what they want as well [although] Vern is pretty fair — if you play well, he tends to reward that. Six Nations will be interesting. I’m aware of how many times I’ve sat here and said ‘oh this is looking good’. We’ve had good autumns before, and we tend to live in a bit of a bubble.
“The reality is that it’s so competitive now. Look at Italy beating South Africa. If we play well, then we’ll compete. If we don’t put our best foot forward, we won’t. It’s as simple as that.
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“We don’t have the squad, the depth that some of the other countries have, but when we play to our strengths, play aggressive, play fast and defend well, we challenge teams now and we score tries.”
Barclay could just as easily be talking about his club team and the scenario they confront today. Scarlets must beat Toulon to stand any chance of going through from Pool Three in Saracens’ slipstream. They finished creditably at the Stade Mayol last week, Barclay crossing in the last minute of a 31-20 defeat, but a terrible first half-hour had left them with too much to do.
“It sounds a bit funny because we never actually got to within a score, but I thought we could have beaten them,” says Barclay, whose advice to younger teammates presumably doesn’t include making obscene gestures about the referee in plain sight of the cameras. Not Davies’ finest, or brightest, hour.
“Whenever we had the ball, we looked dangerous, scored two tries and had another disallowed which probably shouldn’t have been. What was most disappointing was we
didn’t really get out of the blocks.”
Scarlets reached the semi-final of what was then the Heineken Cup as recently as 2007, but while the income from Europe is certainly welcome, a more pressing priority is re-establishing themselves as a side that can compete for domestic silverware. There has been only one semi-final since the Pro12 introduced playoffs in 2010, and their last three efforts have been sixth, sixth and fifth.
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“Last year we fell off the wagon massively at the end of the season. We’d been top half, even top, for large chunks of the season then just fell away. The change about qualifying for Europe has had a massive impact on the competition. You can’t take your eye off the ball at any stage, because there are more teams than ever challenging for those top four places.”
Barclay, who has another year and a half on his contract in Wales, plans to bring Finlay (three) and Logan (eight months) back to Scotland to be schooled. That said, he’s not looking too far ahead.
He has his hands full on and off the pitch, and is giving a good impression of loving every minute.