Last summer, Alex Sanderson met his crane-sized lock forward Ben Bamber in a Mancunian steakhouse. Two local boys plotting the growth of a northern powerhouse. They spoke about Sale Sharks and they spoke about Bamber, what he’d been through and what he hoped to seize next.
Sanderson asked Bamber what he wanted from the new season. “I’ll be your biggest headache,” Bamber replied. “I’ll be a nightmare. I want to make you have to pick me.” Sure enough, Sanderson’s cranium was soon throbbing.
From relative obscurity, Bamber played 21 Sale games last term. He started opposite James Ryan, Will Skelton and Ruben van Heerden in Europe and won England A honours against Portugal back in February. Steve Borthwick is a quiet admirer of the 23-year-old, for his awesome 6ft 9ins, 126kg frame and his all-court skillset.
This is a far cry from the giant teenager who grew up obsessed with rugby league a few miles from the Salford Community Stadium. The boy who knew nothing of union and sought none of these achievements. The young man who walked away from the game altogether two years ago and was instead stacking wine crates in a factory and erecting scaffolding around the city. Bamber’s story is by turns instructive and inspiring.
He was first spotted by Alan Tait, the great former dual code international and British and Irish Lion, five years ago. Tait was working for Scottish Rugby, scouting the north of England for eligible prospects in either sport. He saw this human lighthouse in action for the Huddersfield Giants academy and immediately introduced himself.
“He was 6ft 8ins at 18 years old, and he wasn’t thin, he was massive,” Tait remembers. “It was his balance. You’re isolated more in defence in league than in union, and his movement was good, he could get down and tackle, he could carry well. I knew he would come through.
I’d never watched rugby union, maybe the odd Six Nations game if it was on the telly. You know, kick-and-clap it was called.
“He was on Sale’s doorstep. I couldn’t believe a club like Sale wouldn’t have someone scouting round there. How had he not been involved with union, with his size and height?”
Bamber had no Scottish ancestry, and zero interest in switching codes. But a year later, when Huddersfield scaled back their academy investment, he didn’t fancy chugging up and down the M62 for a part-time gig. Tait put his old friend and team-mate Pat Lam on notice and with help from agent Tom Beattie, Bamber was soon bound for Bristol.
“I’d never watched rugby union, maybe the odd Six Nations game if it was on the telly,” the second-row remembers. “You know, kick-and-clap it was called. That’s what I’d heard about it from playing league.
“There’s no set-piece in rugby league, it’s all patterns of play. I’m still working on my set-piece now. It can never be too good. You’d have certain plays off lineouts in certain areas of the pitch, same with scrums – it was blowing my mind. You’d finish training and have your head in your phone or your book looking at huddles and trying to pick stuff up.”
That introduction to union was challenging. Bamber suffered from homesickness exacerbated by the pandemic and serious shoulder injuries which stalled his momentum. In the end, he chose to give up the game.
“I made the decision driving back down to Bristol after a weekend at home. I rang them on the Sunday, went in on the Monday to talk it through, and that was it – packed it in.
“I wasn’t playing much, I was away from family, and I was still young. That’s what drove me to try my hand at getting a normal job. I thought it would be better. I just didn’t enjoy it. This is someone else’s opportunity I am taking up. There are people who want to be here, so let them. Who am I to take it away if I don’t want it?”
Bamber did not experience an affluent upbringing, but family has always been the strongest pillar in his life. Leaving them for the West Country tore at him deeply. He missed having siblings and aunties and cousins around every corner, as he did back home in Urmston, on Manchester’s southwest fringes. That sense of community and familiarity were dear to him.
“We moved three times when I was a kid,” he says. “We were always in a council house. I must have been 17, 18 when my mum bought her first house with my stepdad. It took them a while to get there.
“We are all so close. My cousins would walk down the street and we’d all play together. My Mrs’ family is the same. We’ve always looked after each other.”
I started at the wine factory and that was four days on, four days off, so on my off days I’d do a bit of scaffolding with one of my mates. I would work the nightshift, then go to the gym, go for a swim, then a run, go to bed and do it all again.
When he drove out of the Bears’ sleek high-performance centre that morning, Bamber had no plan in mind. His stepfather got him night work at the Kingsland wine factory, only a few minutes from the Sharks stadium where he now takes care of business every other weekend. The graft was enjoyable, but made him appreciate the rare privilege of being a professional sportsman.
“I started at the wine factory and that was four days on, four days off, so on my off days I’d do a bit of scaffolding with one of my mates. I would work the nightshift, then go to the gym where my Mrs worked at the time, go for a swim, then a run, go to bed and do it all again. It was tough but it makes you think now, how different the lifestyle is.
“That was honest work, good work, and I met some great people in the factory and scaffolding. You’d have the old classic shaking the ladder while someone is climbing up with a bucket of fittings. Good fun. That’s my favourite part of rugby – having a good time with it.”
Beattie understood Bamber’s need for a break, but did not want to see his obvious talent perish. Through the club’s former defence coach Mike Forshaw, Beattie and Tait arranged a trial at Sale and in Bamber’s words, ‘I winged it’.
“That’s when I thought, bloody hell, it’s mega, this – I love it again. I obviously wanted it because I came back. It worked out well.
“Going to Sale I thought, ‘don’t miss’. I like to say I haven’t missed. I took my opportunities. That was a big thing. You are grateful for it now. You’ve got to work for your opportunities but that just gets you to the starting blocks, doesn’t it? It’s what you do after.”
In his first season with his local side, Bamber trained with the juggernaut first team and played mostly for Sale FC down the English pyramid. He won the National League 1 club’s supporters player of the year award. Then came the steakhouse vow and the season he’d longed for. And he’s picked up exactly where he left off, starting two of the opening three Premiership games and playing an influential role in each of them.
In last Friday’s helter-skelter win over Gloucester, Arron Reed produced an obscene piece of cover defence which had everyone shrieking; hunting down Charlie Atkinson with a 20m handicap, then springing to his feet to scrag George Barton five metres from the home line. Closer examination of the footage reveals a lumbering 6ft 9ins second-row, in the 78th minute, was the next Sale man in attendance. There’s training-ground footage of Bamber slotting touchline goals, his handling is slick and lineout work improving all the time.
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“I’m quite lucky my best mate Alex Groves is a second row, he is knowledgeable and we speak about lineouts quite a lot,” he says. “I’ve had some world-class lineout operators and scrummagers to play alongside, and it’s just picking brains and doing what you said you were going to do.
“If you plan to do a bit of extra kick-offs after the sessions, make sure you get it done. At Bristol, all us young boys would have six-man and five-man lineouts going, an extra 20 reps after training. Not for the sake of doing it, but to understand it was going to help. Now me and [academy lock] Tom Burrow have a little competition every week, we have five kick-offs each after the sessions. There’s nothing on it, just who can get the most. It’s something to make it purposeful.”
Somewhere along the line, inside this affable, salt-of-the-earth Mancunian, a fuse was lit. Bamber has the starting jersey in a fearsome grip. The Du Preez henchmen, Dan and Jean-Luc, are fit again for this weekend’s visit of Steve Diamond and Newcastle. Le Roux Roets and Hyron Andrews, two more gargantuan South Africans, are sniffing for opportunities. Jonny Hill is still awaiting potential sanction for an incident with a Bath supporter last season but Sale hope it is not too long before he, too, returns. Presently, Bamber is each man’s ‘headache’.
“You want to do it all – England, the Lions, win everything,” he says. “I was speaking to Al about it this week. If I play well here, the next step will come – England A or the England senior side. What I do at Sale will enhance my chance of going further and further.
“Aside from that, it’s so my family are sorted. The on-pitch accolades are really good but what’s next? We want to win it all – who doesn’t? – but for my family’s sake as well. My Mrs and my mum, my dad, my siblings, to make sure we are all sorted. That would be nice.
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