From Auckland real estate agent to Super Rugby star

PHOTO: Super Rugby 2022

Up until this season, it had been eight years since former Blues playmaker Baden Kerr last played Super Rugby.

He didn’t intend on returning to professional rugby, either, as after a journeyman-like career that had seen him play in New Zealand, England and Japan, Kerr had hung the boots up for good to become a real estate agent with Barfoot & Thompson.

That was until late last year, when Fijian Drua head coach Mick Byrne – the former All Blacks and Wallabies assistant coach who worked with Kerr at the Blues – gave the experienced pivot an SOS call to plug a gap in the new franchise’s squad.

Fast forward a few months, and Kerr is now back in the revamped Super Rugby Pacific, plying his trade for one of the competition’s newcomers as the only non-Fijian in the entire squad.

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It’s a journey that, like most people, the 32-year-old veteran didn’t see coming as he prepared to begin life outside of rugby, but it’s one he has fully embraced since joining the Drua for the current campaign.

“For years, I sort of battled with niggles and injuries, and it gets to a point where I was at a certain age where you want to start focusing on life after rugby,” Kerr told the Aotearoa Rugby Pod of how the opportunity to join the Drua came about.

“I sort of got to a point where I guess rugby was sort of fading out, there wasn’t as many opportunities, wasn’t necessarily playing my best or in my best nick, so decided to sort of let it go and got into a bit of real estate, which was never a plan, ever.