Barbeary reveals 'bolt upright' reset that rescued his Bath career before Saracens move

Alfie Barbeary delivered three straight player-of-the-match performances for Bath in January 2026 — against Exeter in the Premiership and Castres and Edinburgh in the Champions Cup — just weeks after learning the club would not be extending his contract. The No.8, who has since joined Saracens, describes the news as leaving him “gutted”, but channelled that frustration into the best form of his season.

Barbeary had endured a disrupted first half of the campaign through minor injury niggles, but the deeper issue, he now suggests, was a technical adjustment he had been persuaded to make. Coaches had been urging him to lower his carry height, a widespread trend in the modern game. For a player whose physicality depends on his distinctive upright style, the tweak was quietly undermining everything that made him effective.

“What made a good ball carrier is that I’m very unique and I’m quite bolt upright when I carry — although I’m still amazed that some boys hit my face,” Barbeary told Rugby Journal. “But the way the game was going, everyone was saying, ‘you’ve got to get your carry height down, you’ve got to be lower and lower.’”

With his Bath future already decided, Barbeary resolved to trust his instincts. “I just went, right, we’ll go back to our basics, I’ll start carrying how I used to, I’ll start carrying upright, I’ll be polite to the coach and say, ‘I’m gonna carry bolt upright again, see how that goes.’ And then the form starts coming back, and I started playing better, my carrying was starting to get there, and I am starting to feel like myself again.”

Despite that resurgence, an England call-up did not follow — something Barbeary is acutely aware of at 25. “It’s my last real shot at England,” he said, framing his move to Saracens as part of a deliberate push to reach the international stage.

Barbeary has already had a taste of the England environment, albeit an abrupt one. Invited into an Eddie Jones training camp early in his professional career after only three or four Premiership appearances, he was greeted with a characteristically blunt welcome. “The first thing Eddie said to me was in front of the whole group,” Barbeary recalled. “He said, ‘Lads, it’s the final week, Alfie this is your first camp, and if you don’t train well, it’ll be your f** last mate.’ I remember it was followed by just silence. Jack Willis was next to me, just trying not to laugh. So, yeah, that was a weird one. It gave you a taste though, and you wanted more.”