Con Barrell

Without becoming a super star, or even playing a test, Con Barrell, a powerfully built prop, had a long, eventful and profitable career, particularly at provincial and Super 12 levels.

Orginally a hooker, Barrell switched to propping for his first representative season with North Auckland in 1990. When he stopped playing at New Zealand top level in 2002 to finish his active career overseas Barrell had become the first man to play 50 NPC matches each for two different provinces: Northland and Canterbury.

Barrell was a regular North Auckland, or Northland as it became known in 1994, player and as such gained a place in the Divisional XV for tours South Pacific (1993) and of Canda and Fiji in 1995. But midway through the 1995 season he moved to Canterbury and played in that union’s Ranfurly Shield defences that year.

In 1996 he began a six-season Super 12 stint with the Crusaders, finishing in 2001 with 44 appearances and a role in the three-peat title victories of 1998-2000. Barrell was also a stalwart member of the Canterbury side which in 1997 took out the NPC first division title. In the round robin match against Auckland, the dominant NPC force until then, Barrell on the tighthead side gained a spectacular scrum advantage over Auckland’s Craig Dowd.

Barrell gained his All Black jersey as part of the 36-man playing squads which were taken to South Africa in 1996 and to Ireland, Wales and England in 1997. On each tour he made only two midweek appearances, but in 1997 he was a reserve for the second international against England.

Barrell never made the All Blacks again, but he was in the New Zealand A side of 1999 and toured with that side again to Europe in 2000. The last of his 65 appearances for Canterbury came in 2002 when he was aged 35. In 2001 he had been lent to Nelson Bays for that union’s NPC second division matches and in 2002 he returned, again as a loan player for he was still under contract to Canterbury, to Northland to take his appearances for that union to in excess of 80.

A cheerful journeyman, Barrell with his many matches at provincial level, in the Super 12 and with several national selections at various levels, finished his career with close to 230 first class games.