{"id":377527,"date":"2026-01-18T22:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/377527\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T22:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:02:10","slug":"clark-laidlaw-on-barrett-return-and-off-season-signings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/377527\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark Laidlaw on Barrett return and off-season signings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amidst the discussions surrounding the All Blacks<\/a> this week, Super Rugby Pacific sides have been battling away in pre-season training, preparing for another season that gets underway in February.<\/p>\n

The full list of pre-season fixtures for 2026 was released earlier this week, with five New Zealand<\/a> derbies to look forward to before the season gets underway on February 13.<\/p>\n

For the Hurricanes, who finished fourth in the regular season last year, the focus will be on improving on a quarter-final exit ahead of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Hurricanes<\/a> head coach Clark Laidlaw is now in his third season with the Wellington-based franchise, and will be joined by former All Blacks assistant Jason Holland this season, who left his role as an attack, and strike coach under Scott Robertson.<\/p>\n

All Blacks lineout coach Bryn Evans<\/a> will return to Wellington<\/a> for the Super Rugby Pacific<\/a> season in the international off-season, after a year of experience under Robertson in the All Blacks.<\/p>\n

Having 78-Test All Black midfielder Jordie Barrett<\/a> is like a brand new signing for Laidlaw, while adding Japan<\/a> international Warner Dearns<\/a> will add some much-needed steel into the Hurricanes\u2019 second row.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Tony Johnson on\u00a0Sport Nation Mornings, Laidlaw explained how good it is to have Barrett back in camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a genuine world class player. It\u2019s so helpful to have a really good player like him back in the mix, and he\u2019s been back in training the last week and a half. He\u2019s back in early which sort of shows his hunger to come in and make impact within the group,\u201d Laidlaw said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I really feel, I guess, his maturity, his communication, his voice, you can really feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only have Barrett and Dearns been added to the squad, but Josh Moorby and Lucas Cashmore<\/a> are also in yellow for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Laidlaw is full of praise for his new Japanese lock, who decided to take a sabbatical in New Zealand to experience a different league before the 2027 Rugby World Cup<\/a> in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to go and experience different rugby, he\u2019s obviously played a lot of rugby in Japan and he was really ambitious around improving his game, I think he probably had all of the New Zealand Super Rugby teams, and some European options as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then obviously a little gem we have in our back pocket is that he\u2019s a local boy in a Hurricanes family, his mum\u2019s over the hill. His sister lives in Wellington, so I guess that was maybe a little draw card that we had from him coming here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we really love his movement around the field and his set-piece work is outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amidst the discussions surrounding the All Blacks this week, Super Rugby Pacific sides have been battling away in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-377527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}