One of the locals sitting near the window finally broke the tension. "I hope you've got more friends in 12 months," he said. Welcome to the northern beaches, coach. We find Barrett this week sitting in the same bar at the same table on the same stool. He's just come from training and is wearing training shorts and runners. He orders a mid-strength beer and a packet of plain Smith's Crisps and tears it open. "It was weird, especially with Tooves," he says of the man he replaced as coach, Geoff Toovey. "He's a legend of the club. There was a lot of pressure when I did get here. Being young, and a little inexperienced, it felt like there were a lot of eyes on me when I walked around the joint. "I do come here a fair bit. Once we started to get some results, especially of late, people started to form an opinion of who I was. They're good blokes who drink here. They've played footy. They're passionate about Manly."

He stops for a second. "They just like winning." Now, as his side presses for a top-four finish having destroyed the Roosters in the second half at Lottoland last Sunday, Barrett rarely has to buy a beer at the Hilton. Others can't stop raving about him. He's considered one of the favourites to be named Dally M Coach of the Year in grand final week. Earlier this year, Phil Gould branded him "the next supercoach". Then this from Bob Fulton, the Manly head of football who enticed Barrett to the club: "He'll be one of our great coaches. There's touch of greatness about him. He's no longer a rookie — he's arrived as a coach." High praise from two giants of the game. Barrett smiles when you ask if he's the next supercoach.

"I wasn't two weeks ago," he says, referring to his team conceding 92 points in heavy losses to the Dragons and Storm. It's reassuring to hear Barrett talk like this; to still seem unaffected by a job that can turn country boys from Temora into snarling, grizzled old men overnight. Like Barrett, Brad Fittler was one of the nice guys. Then he started coaching the Roosters and his personality changed until he walked away and changed back to being the affable lunatic we all adore. So, don't go changing, Baz. Please. "That won't happen," Barrett insists. "I'm conscious that I got to where I am because of who I am and the personality I have. I can't be cranky because that's not me. I can get my point across without going off my head. The blow-ups wear thin."

Has he gone nuclear at all, though? "I've had some good ones. I had a good one today. Just a short burst. They know when I do that it's got meaning. When I first got here, I was tested out. But they now know what I will put up with and what I won't." He has Fulton as support — "ruthless in making the hard decisions" is how he describes the legendary figure — but Barrett still seems very un-Manly. So is the way he goes about his business. For years, the Sea Eagles thrived on puffing out their chest and winning matches with impudent aplomb. They had the run of the northern beaches. They had it in the 1980s and '90s under Fulton. They had it under Des Hasler a decade after that. Premierships were won and dynasties formed off the back of calculated arrogance, especially from their senior players.

In the past few years, though, it's come back to bite them. Actually, it's torn them apart. In one corner sat a pack of senior players. In the other, sat halfback Daly Cherry-Evans, the young gun they could never quite cop. Of all the right strings Barrett has pulled in the past two years, the one that's been most beneficial has been to wave those senior players goodbye and give Cherry-Evans the cuddle he needed. "When I got here, Chez was down on confidence," Barrett says. "He'd been put through the wringer through the whole Titans stuff. [Cherry-Evans backflipped on a deal in 2015 to join Gold Coast and stayed at the Sea Eagles]. There was talk of split groups in the team and that was something I had to manage when I first got here, because everyone pretended it wasn't there — but it was there. I always knew there was a leader in Chez but he was kept in his box. Through the real successful era of the Stewarts [Glenn and Brett] and Jamie Lyon, it had been their club. "Part of the reason why I made Cherry captain was that I saw a leader but I wanted him to have confidence and know I believed in him. I think it was the right call. He's really grown into the role. He's a strong bloke. He speaks his mind and that's admirable. He's been put in some awkward positions, Chez. I'm proud of how he's handled it, because it would've caved in a few others. "It took him a while to work out who he was and what people expected him to be. I just said to him, 'You be you. You don't have to please anyone'."

Unlocking Cherry-Evans has been just one of the issues Barrett has had to face. Last season, as his team lost seven in a row, as match-fixing allegations swirled around past and present players, as injuries savaged key players, he wondered what he'd launched himself into. Gould had identified him as a coach years ago after he saw him mesmerise the room with a presentation to the Penrith club's playmakers. "Now, there's a coach," Gould said down the phone while driving home that night. Fulton recalls having a quiet beer with Barrett in the Sofitel Hotel in Brisbane before an Origin match when Barrett was part of Ricky Stuart's NSW coaching staff. "He had a plan then to become an NRL coach," Fulton says. Not after losing seven straight. He didn't feel like an NRL coach then.

"I was thinking, 'Am I cut-out for this? It can't be this hard'," Barrett reflects. "There was stuff off the field, on the field, our senior players weren't playing ... "I remember Wayne Bennett was once asked what was most important about coaching. He said 'perseverance'. I made a conscious decision to never turn up to training and let them see that I was doubting what we were doing. That was a decision I had to make for myself. I couldn't let the staff see it, the players see it. I had to give them the confidence to keep going and battle through." Barrett's breezy personality deceives his mental toughness. Just over his shoulder in the bar is a TV and it is showing grainy black-and-white footage of a match from the 1960s involving St George. The great Billy Smith races over for a try in a pristine white jumper with red V on the front. Few players wore the brunt of the Dragons' inability to win a grand final in the late 1990s and 2000s quite like Barrett, who played 154 matches for the joint-venture. "Sometimes, I think my footy career was just preparing me for this," he says. "There aren't too many things in the game I haven't been through. We've had a bit going on here in the last two years. It's still going. But my playing career toughened me up. I've dealt with it since I was 18 years old."

He's referring to the match-fixing scandal and now an NRL probe into the club's salary cap. Barrett channels his inner-Hasler. "I can use it to my advantage," he admits. "Us versus Them. There's no other way you can do it. Everyone's out to get us, let's jam it up their arse. The only right of reply we've got is to win." He's looking for angles everywhere. Legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh's Finding the Winning Edge is on his bookshelf. So, too, Alex Ferguson's autobiography. I mention Sun Tzu's The Art of War as a joke. "Yeah, I've got that," he says, nodding. "There's some good stuff in there. There's some weird stuff in there. Bill Walsh was way ahead of his time. The detail in his sessions and planning were a long way ahead. I'm drawn to coaches who get the most out of individuals. We all need good players to win. But it's up to me to get a player of limited ability to play to his absolute potential."

That's what Barrett has done this year following the retirements of Brett Stewart, Steve Matai and injuries to Jorge Taufua and Curtis Sironen. That's $1.35 million of Manly's salary cap not playing. In the past two years, Fulton has masterfully turned over dozens of players as he rebuilds the Fortress. Barrett is making it work with a roster that's young and inexperienced when compared to those near them on the ladder. He says he was "embarrassed" by the 92 points leaked before last Sunday's win over the Roosters. Before that, they'd been the third best defensive team in the NRL. "I went through our training, our warm-up, the games, everything, looking for a magic answer," he said. "But there wasn't one. It's just attitude." He made changes but, more than that, didn't panic at half-time with his side trailing 18-4. Manly scored 32 unanswered points in the second half against a team widely considered the best in the competition behind Melbourne.