Ben Bamber is busy on his day off, trying to sell his car. It turns out that a Seat Ibiza is inappropriate for someone who is 6ft 8in and owns a 35kg German shepherd and a cocker spaniel.
Do you fit in a hatchback, Ben? “Just,” the Sales Sharks lock says. “That’s obviously one of the reasons I have to sell. If I drive for more than half an hour, my knees are agony, mate. So if you know anyone who wants a Seat Ibiza with 120,000 miles on it…”
Bamber is much more comfortable in his Ford Ranger pick-up. It suits him better anyway. A heavy-duty, working man’s car with a big engine.
Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, describes the 24-year-old as “the salt of the north”, Bamber being the bloke from the scaffolding site who is known by everyone in the Irlam Greggs. He is set to be the next big thing with England.
It was Sanderson who popped into that bakery for a few bacon butties the other week, a mile and a half down the A57 from the CorpAcq Stadium, where Sale play, and bumped into a bunch of factory workers who were talking Bamber up.
“Greggs is where it’s at in Irlam,” Bamber says. Not long ago he played rugby in the town, when he was not around the corner at the Kingsland Drinks warehouse, stacking wine crates.
“That was tough. It was four nights on, four nights off,” he says. “Six at night ’til six in the morning, so 12-hour shifts. Then I’d go for a steak bake.”
Sanderson loves Bamber — everyone at Sale does — because he seems to sum them up. Proper northern grit without ego, skilful and physical. Bamber credits all that to his hard-grafting, outdoorsy life. He grew up with his brother, Kieran, two years his senior, in Urmston, near Sale’s Carrington training base. His father worked in the family fencing business, and is now a lorry driver. Kieran has become an engineer.
“We weren’t really iPad kids,” Bamber says. “We’d play rugby on the front, one v one, until my mum called us in for our tea. We’d go off to rugby training then go straight back out again. We’d ruin the grass and flew around with BB guns, shooting each other. The neighbours hated us. Mum wasn’t that pleased about it, either.
“Dad would let us come on sites with him. We probably shouldn’t have, because we were about 14. We’d always go to the yard to muck about on the forklifts.”
Bamber clashes with Toulon’s David Ribbans during a Champions Cup fixture in January
DARREN STAPLES/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
But that made Bamber tough, and strong. He played rugby league for Langworthy, near Salford, and supported Huddersfield Giants, where his grandfather was a director.
“My hero was Adrian Morley. He never played for Huddersfield, but he’s from Salford, local,” Bamber says. “I had the privilege of playing touch rugby with him and Mickey Higham when he was at Warrington, at a little tournament when I was 14. I can say I played with them, even though it was a game of touch.”
Bamber made the Giants academy, where the dual-code Scotland, Great Britain and British & Irish Lions centre Alan Tait scouted him in 2020, and told his former Newcastle team-mate Pat Lam he should sign him for Bristol Bears.
Bamber did not thrive there. A long way from home, he learnt how to live as an adult but a series of shoulder injuries scuppered his progress. He continued scaffolding when Sale signed him in 2022, only stopping recently.
“I’d always find that I’d come back in preseason feeling really strong, as you’re carrying heavy stuff around in awkward positions,” he says. “The biggest building I’ve been up was in Walsall, where me and my dad were doing the gutters.
“It was awful. I don’t think anyone is a big fan of heights when you’re on top of a cherry picker, fixing a steel gutter that weighs about 40kg and the wind’s blowing.
“The biggest lesson I’ve learnt from doing a normal job is how much easier you have it as a professional athlete. [Rugby is] a lot more fun than waking up at 6.30am, freezing cold, getting rained on all day, carrying scaffolding tubes around. There’s a lot more pressure in professional sport, but what it’s taught me is: don’t take it for granted.”
Bamber’s varied skills make him a prospect. “He’s super physical, he’s learnt to call lineouts, he’s got hands like a back as he played league. Big hands, but soft,” Sanderson says. “He’s the salt of the north, and has all that talent to boot as well. He’s one of my favourite people, not just favourite players.”
Bamber is so dedicated to his craft that he loses weight to play at No5, when he prefers to feel “a bit lighter” in the lineout, and puts it on again for doing the heavy work at No4
CODY FROGGATT/PA
England’s era of locks has waned a little, since the days when Eddie Jones had to choose between Courtney Lawes, Joe Launchbury, George Kruis and Maro Itoje. Itoje and Ollie Chessum are England’s present Lions, but with George Martin often unfit, and Alex Coles, Nick Isiekwe and Charlie Ewels never truly establishing themselves at Test level, there looks to be space for a big unit.
Interestingly, Bamber is so diligent that he alters his weight depending on what position he plays. Sale like their No4 lock to be big and heavy, but their No5 to leap more in lineouts, so Bamber adds or sheds a few kilograms — fluctuating between 118 and 121kg.
“It’s probably more mental than anything. I’ll feel a bit better in games if I’m a little bit lighter,” Bamber says. “Over a week it’s not much — a few spoonfuls of rice or summat!”
In three years at Sale, Bamber has added 10kg, while shaving a minute off his Bronco fitness test time, to 5min 17sec, among the best for front-five forwards. For that, players shuttle up and down different lengths of the rugby field, so Bamber has the lungs too.
He has one England A cap, earned against Portugal in 2024, and should add to that against the All Blacks XV and Spain in November. After that, who knows?
Bamber has belief that he can win the Prem with Sale one day and put down a marker for rugby again in Manchester
JAN KRUGER/GETTY IMAGES
He has a chance to prove his mettle against Leicester Tigers and Chessum on Saturday in the Gallagher Prem, when Sale must right the wrongs of their chastening 65-14 defeat by Saracens. “I wouldn’t mind being where [Chessum] is, in England camp,” Bamber says.
But before prioritising any England dreams, Bamber wants to lift something shiny and heavy with his mates at Sale — and not a scaffolding pole.
“I’d love to win the Prem,” he says. “We believe we can, the coaches believe, hopefully the fans believe. I’m from Manchester, I love Manchester. There’s a lot of football around, so it would be good to put a marker down in the city.
“If we do, we need to get the parade bus round to the drive-thru Greggs.”
And fill the trophy with steak bakes? “That wouldn’t be bad, would it?” Bamber says, grinning.
Leicester Tigers v Sale Sharks
Gallagher Prem
Saturday, 5.30pm
TV TNT Sports 3