Speaking in an interview with Echo reporter Chris Phillips at a blustery Boots & Laces, Barrett detailed how his career could have taken a different complexion had inclement weather not arrived in the middle of the 2000/1 campaign. Barrett, who was born in Dagenham, deep in metropolitan Essex, and was raised in Rayleigh, attending Belfairs School, left Plymouth Argyle in December 2000 after falling out of favour with Paul Sturrock, the boss at Home Park at the time.
“Maybe I left a bit early”, Barrett conceded, “I was probably a bit hasty, but I wanted first-team football and they sold me to Mansfield”. The Stags tabled a £10,000 bid, though it could all have been so different, with David Webb, in his third spell at the helm of the Roots Hall outfit, inviting the local boy to trail with the Seasiders.
Barrett was drawn into the reserve side for an Avon Insurance Combination clash, but the match was scrapped when the weather got in the way. “The game got called off and straight after Mansfield came in with the bid”, the 24-year-old continued. However, life at Field Mill was not easy. In a season-and-a-half in Nottinghamshire, Barrett played just 42 times, and explained, “I started well at Mansfield, but then I got another bad ankle injury”.
The tough-tackling centre-half required two operations and eight months before getting himself in the side, but his contract expired just as the ITV Digital deal with the Football League collapsed. “They offered me less money and, just on principle, I decided to leave”, Barrett declared.
Incredibly, the defender was a direct replacement at the Memorial Stadium for current Shrimpers left-back Che Wilson, who had been skipper of the Pirates until that deal collapsed and he was released. “It’s a very big club”, Barrett gushed, “and, on a personal note, I had a really good time. It was a difficult decision to leave”.
But leave the blocker, who has found the net five times so far in 2004/5, did, and it was to come back to Southend for the first time after thirteen years if travelling, having started that as an 11-year-old on the books of Luton Town. “As soon as I knew Southend were interested, there was only one place I was going to go. And that was back home, with Blues, where my heart is”.
Robert Craven
www.thelittlegazette.com