I just checked list utils, and searched cpan for a package for this sort of thing. I found Array::Split which does exactly what I did - only without chewing through the original with pop. Using this package:

 #!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Printer;
use Array::Split qw( split_into );

my @original = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9);
my $numberofarrays = 2;
my @arrayrefs = split_into($numberofarrays,@original);
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