With his belated arrival in Pretoria, Beauden Barrett will definitely not start the Hurricanes' Super Rugby season opener.

All Blacks superstar Beauden Barrett will not start for the Hurricanes in their Super Rugby opener against the Bulls in Pretoria – and might even end up watching the match from the stands as coach Chris Boyd weighs his options.

Barrett missed the chance to tuck away his only pre-season action for the Hurricanes when he bypassed Thursday's final hitout against the Blues in Warkworth to attend the weddings of a close friend and his brother Kane this weekend.

That all came with the blessing of his Canes coaches who were happy to allow their star playmaker to attend to a couple of important personal matters at a time when it is least disruptive to their campaign.

PHOTOSPORT Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd is considering his options with Beauden Barrett.

But, as Boyd revealed after the Hurricanes' 26-14 victory over the Blues at the Mahurangi club in Warkworth, Barrett's lack of any pre-season minutes under his belt will limit his opening-week availability, and might even see him bypass the first match altogether.

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"He'll come to Australia on Sunday and on to Johannesburg on Monday. He'll be with us Monday night," said Boyd. The Hurricanes flew out of Auckland on Friday, with a Saturday departure from Sydney to South Africa.

"But when we discussed what that might look like for him, he hasn't played any pre-season minutes, so he'll come off the bench probably in Pretoria. We may yet choose to make that one of his All Black rest weeks, we'll wait and see how that pans out."

The Hurricanes open their season against the Bulls in Pretoria next Sunday (NZT) and then head to Buenos Aires to tackle the Jaguares second up.

Boyd explained that their ability to use Barrett unencumbered in the opener was limited by return-to-play protocols agreed with the All Blacks.

And with All Blacks required to be given a couple of games off during the competition, Boyd is now ruminating on whether itg might be wise to tick off one of Barrett's on opening week.

"We try to fit into a 40-60-80 [minutes] return to play, but obviously you can't do it with everybody. When you've got two or three guys in the same area you can't rest them all at the same time.

"Either way we'll get their minutes in return to play right as requested by the All Blacks, and we'll worry about their down weeks as we get along through the competition."

Boyd does have solid depth behind barrett at No 10, with former Blues playmaker Ihaia West looking sharp in his 40 minutes with the starting group in warkworth, and Jackson Garden-Bachop running the show for the second-half group.

"Either Ihaia or Jackson will start at 10 against the Bulls," said Boyd when asked about West's readiness to step into a starting role if required. "I've always had a lot of time for Ihaia. Because he was in the Hurricanes region, I've been watching him play since he was under-16s. With some optimistic support around him, I'm picking Ihaia is going to do a good job for us this year."

The Canes, like the Blues, had plenty of scratchy moments as they re-integrated their All Blacks contingent for their final pre-season hitout, but Boyd was confident his group are ready to hit the ground running in the republic after winning both warmup games.

"We've had a really good pre-season. Some of those later returning guys were a little bit rusty and ideally we'd like another pre-season game, But we're physically where we need to be, and just team cohesion wise we're probably one week away. I think we'll be OK."

Boyd shrugged off a couple of lineout misfires in Warkworth as a concern, explaining they were holding their best stuff back for the competition proper, felt his All Blacks had "blown out the cobwebs" adequately and said he had been rapt to see Michael Fatialofa, Blade Thompson and Matt Proctor all log quality minutes in their return from major injuries.

He was also hopeful his squad's depth – arguably the best of the Kiwi franchises – would prove a factor in what shaped as another highly competitive New Zealand conference.

"If you write down on paper the starting XVs of the five [Kiwi] franchises, they're all extremely high quality teams. With the double-header of derbies that's going to put extra pressure on.

"I think it's the sides that can manage their roster and get some value out of their guys from 16-25 and keep guys playing who will survive through it. We're pretty comfortable the guys in that space on our roster are all good cattle."

Squad: Forwards; Toby Smith, Chris Eves, Ben May, Fraser Armstrong, Alex Fidow, Ricky Riccitelli, James O'Rielly, Sam Lousi, Murray Douglas, Michael Fatialofa, Vaea Fifita, Brad Shields (c), Ardie Savea, Gareth Evans, Blade Thomson; Backs, TJ Perenara, Jamie Booth, Beauden Barrett, Ihaia West, Ngani Laumape, Matt Proctor, Vince Aso, Wes Goosen, Julian Savea, Ben Lam, Jackson Garden-Bachop, Jonah Lowe.