Mcnamara: I’ll be luckiest young half-back in the world with halves I’ve trained with
HULL STAR ON FOLLOWING HIS FATHER, WORKING HARD AND ADRIAN LAM
Most won’t look back on the year 2020 with much fondness. For Ben Mcnamara, though, last year was one that he will never forget. Not only was he asked to make the jump into the Hull FC first team at the age of 18, but also he made his debut in October’s win over Castleford Tigers, scored his first try, appeared in a Hull derby and he did it all on the back of achieving three A*s in his A levels over the summer.
In truth, the short time that has passed since Mcnamara left fulltime education at Pocklington School could not have gone any better.
However, as he prepares for his first pre-season as a professional under Brett Hodgson, he knows the hard work has just begun.
Indeed, 2020 will take some beating for Mcnamara, but he isn’t about to rest on his laurels as he looks to continue carving his own career path out in 2021.
“A hard pre-season, the hardest I’ve ever trained and then hopefully take my chances when I can,” the now 19-year-old told the Mail when asked about expectations of this year. “I’ve still got to earn the trust of the boys and make sure they’re comfortable when I slot into the team with them.
“I just think everything will come off the back of training hard, so that’s what I need to do and hopefully I get some opportunities to play in the first team along the way and form some partnerships and kick on and excel off the back of what we did last year.”
It’s little wonder the youngster isn’t just level-headed and grounded but ambitious, too.
In Steve Mcnamara, he has a father who has been there, done it and knows what it takes to get to the very top of the game, having played and coached at the highest level, with Catalans Dragons currently under his stewardship.
In fact, in making his debut for
FC, Ben became the third member of the Mcnamara family to have pulled on the irregular hoops as his grandfather Ted also had the honour.
Unfortunately, Steve couldn’t be at Wheldon Road to watch his son’s senior debut, but he was watching on from his apartment in Perpignan with pride.
“He was the first person he called on the bus after I played,” Ben said.
“We speak about rugby all the time, I don’t think we’d have too much to talk about if we didn’t!
“We still watch games together and talk about it. I didn’t know what it would be like before I played but it’s just the same.
“Even now in the off-season at home, because I don’t see him for most of the year, it’s still an opportunity to learn a bit off him.. He’s still doing work obviously so I learn a bit off that. I think his opinion along with the coaches is what I value the most.
“He’s not too harsh on me. When I was younger there was moments when I was definitely taking rugby seriously but needed to put a bit more work in than I realised to get to the level I wanted to be at. He would have told me but, he’s definitely constructive about games I’ve played in.”
Having such a famous surname
Ben was instantly one to watch for Hull fans when he signed his professional deal with the club in 2019. But, has that brought added pressure too?
He said: “There’s always a sense coming all the way through junior teams that you might have only got the opportunities you had because of who you know rather than how you play.
“It’s never in the front of my mind but I know it’s there. So to be able to prove a few people wrong that’s good for me.
“I don’t worry about it too much, I can’t control that and we always get told not to focus on things we can’t control. I just look at it as a positive that I can learn from both of their experiences.”
As a boy, Ben was on Skirlaugh’s books before his dad landed a chance to coach in the NRL under Trent Barrett at Sydney Roosters.
It meant he spent some of his formative years Down Under.
Ben joined the Roosters too at youth level while playing for
Clovelly Crocodiles and it was there he worked with yet another current Super League head coach.
“I was 12 when I moved there,” he added. “It was a massive challenge when I first went there, I’d been a fairly good player in England for Skirlaugh when I was growing up, but it was just a massive shock because everyone was way bigger and faster than me.
“I was one of the youngest in the year because the year runs January to December and I had a lot of tough games. I was in the school C team in year seven so that shows you the amount of people ahead of me at that point. I ended up getting into Roosters.
“Adrian Lam was our coach before he came over here, he’s another who I’ve learned a lot off.”
When it comes to learning from half-backs there are few better than Lam, who represented the Roosters, Wigan, Queensland and Papua New Guinea before going on to forge a career in coaching.
However, Mcnamara has taken plenty from those he has spent time amongst at the club’s County Road training ground, too, and he will soon be joined by another experienced half-back in Josh Reynolds, who joins FC from Wests Tigers for the 2021 season.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “I think I’ll be the luckiest young half-back in the world with some of the halves I’ve been able to train with already, Albert, Sneydy, Jake and now Josh Reynolds, it’s a great opportunity to learn off someone who has done it all really.
“It’s useful to be training with them because you have to raise yourself to their level or else you can get embarrassed in a training session if you’re not switched on and not at the level you need to be.
“It’s been really good for me, I’ve never trained in an environment like that before, I’ve seen it being around my dad’s teams but you improve so much straight away after a few weeks of being in it, picking up stuff from others around you and seeing how hard you have to work to get to the top.
“To an extent, something that I was quite proud of was I felt they had a lot of trust in me for a young kid when I had to step up and play. I think that needs to go to the next level for me to develop in my career and obviously pre-season, everyone knows how tough that is, it’ll be a challenge.”