Ben Hunt’s return to his old Bronco life could be the last of his new beginnings

By the time a footballer gets to Ben Hunt’s age there is little they have not seen or done before but rarely does a career have as similar an end and beginning as it will for the newly re-minted Bronco.

Hunt’s job on return to Brisbane, which begins this weekend in their final trial, already seems clear. 

He’ll cover Adam Reynolds and Ezra Mam in the halves, particularly during Mam’s long suspension to start the year.

From there he’ll likely shift to hooker, where he’ll split minutes with youngster Blake Mozer. He could also spend some time in the middle when new coach Michael Maguire really wants to ramp up the pace of his attack.

As he prepares for his 17th season in the NRL it’s a good role for Hunt, who has always found it easier to be a great footballer than a great halfback. It’s also something he’s done before, long ago enough that it’s almost forgotten.

When Hunt came through the grades at Brisbane almost two decades ago, being a young Bronco was like being born into high society. At just 18, Hunt was the inaugural player of the year in the old Under 20s competition in 2008 and seemed a certainty to become one of the NRL’s top halfbacks sooner rather than later.

What followed was not a graduation to the scrum base, but further study as the club’s utility. Many years of it followed, to the point where Hunt went from prodigy to later bloomer as he waited for his chance.

It was not until almost five seasons after his NRL debut that Hunt played more than three games in a row at halfback, by which point he’d played 82 first grade matches and only started at that position six times.

Those years are strange ones for Hunt because Brisbane, even under Anthony Griffin who was such a formative part of Hunt’s career before and after, took a long time to commit to him.

When Darren Lockyer was injured in the 2011 finals series it was backrower Matt Gillett who was pitched into the halves from the preliminary final against Manly as Hunt sat on the bench.

The following season it was Corey Norman, not Hunt, who was preferred as Lockyer’s full-time replacement in the halves. In 2013, with Norman shifting to fullback, the club signed 33-year old Scott Prince to partner Peter Wallace as Hunt waited and waited.

Once he did get his chance late in that season, things happened quickly. Barely a year later, Hunt was playing for Australia and his career, as we have come to know it, really got started.

To wait and wait and wait as he did all those years ago showed enormous resilience, which was rewarded when he at last made the job his own. This dynamic of weathering a storm only to eventually prosper has happened to Hunt so many times it’s come to inform his entire career.

The pattern repeats over and over — the criticism over his monster deal with St George Illawarra in 2018 was loud and virulent and Hunt responded with one of the best seasons of his career.

Things threatened to go south at the Dragons in 2020 when Hunt hit an awful run of form and got benched before spending time at hooker and five-eighth until he rebounded in the seasons to come, first by winning the club’s player of the year award twice in a row before finally securing a regular place in the Queensland side as he at last became an automatic Origin selection in his 13th year in first grade.

His lowest moment remains the infamous drop in the 2015 grand final, which could have crippled his entire career.

It’s a demon that won’t be fully exorcised unless he wins a premiership — Hunt himself admits he still thinks about it  — but his series-sealing try in the 2022 Origin decider goes pretty close.

That run to paradise seemed to be a watershed moment and the completion of Hunt’s transformation into a universal fan-favourite as he took the long way back from way down in the hole.

His consistency as a competitor won him respect and admiration across the sport and something close to adoration in Queensland.

But it did not last, because nothing around Hunt ever does. He always endures and rarely changes, but that is his gift and his curse because it means he’s in a fixed point while his fortunes constantly rise and fall around him.

Go back and watch the footage from the primordial times, which is old enough to be grainy. The flashes when he was on spot duty replacing Lockyer or Prince or Wallace or whoever was out that week, are shockingly similar to the best of him today.

His dummy is still showy and wicked, he is still fast and dynamic when he runs and he still punts the ball out of the stadium when he scores an important try. Function is still more important than form and he still fights well above his weight class.

That’s not to say Hunt has not grown as a footballer over years — he’s become a more sophisticated player, especially with his kicking game —  but the foundations stay the same.

This makes Hunt a special case when it comes to halves with careers as long as his. Playmakers as varied as Benji Marshall, Cooper Cronk, Johnathan Thurston and even Lockyer himself had to transform their games as they got older to compensate for a loss of athleticism.

Hunt, who could be the second-most capped player in premiership history by the end of this new Bronco deal, has never needed to do this because he has simply never slowed down.

As with Daly Cherry-Evans there have been tweaks, but he’s never needed to totally remodel. Like when you’re waiting for your tax refund before you go the mechanic, the engine is still running so the service can wait a while longer.

Hunt used those same tools that made him a star at Brisbane the first time to become one of the few things that’s consistently worked for the Dragons in recent years. Over the past four seasons, he’s accumulated 93 try assists in 83 games — for context, Nathan Cleary has 82 try assists in 72 games over the same period.

But if a club goes long enough without success nobody is beyond reproach and the Red V have been in a funk for many years now. They have not made the finals since 2018, Hunt’s first season with the team.

It’s the longest play-off drought in team history in more ways than one — even in their previous lives, as two separate clubs in St George and Illawarra, only once did either club miss the finals more than seven years in a row.

As the club’s biggest star, Hunt wore a lot of it and things got messy. The Dragons tried to build around him, bringing in Griffin and a host of ex-Broncos and Queensland teammates, none of which really worked out.

There were release requests and talk that was a little too plain. It was Hunt’s most inconsistent season in some time — he led the league in try assists but posted a career high in errors — as the Shane Flanagan Dragons fought to be born. He either scored or set up just under 40 per cent of their tries. 

By the end, there was so much baggage that last year’s split was the best option for both player and club. They had been through so much together but not enough of it was what anyone wanted.

So Hunt has returned to Brisbane, where some part of his heart has always been — he says he watched every single Broncos game in the seven years he was away. He’s right back where he started, re-born into high society.

Under Maguire and with the talent at their disposal, Brisbane should be thinking about premierships. Having a back-up like Hunt in the halves is downright decadent and later in the year if he settles into the hooker/lock role he’s done so capably for state and country in recent seasons one of the league’s most dangerous attacks becomes even more varied and dynamic.

Even if the captaincy at the Dragons didn’t always suit Hunt, his veteran presence will help a side who’s youth and confidence can occasionally overwhelm them. He’ll be the last player at the Broncos who played alongside Lockyer and that feels important. Hunt will make a team who already harboured title aspirations faster and deadlier and better, on and off the field.

Even his most ardent defender would concede Hunt’s reputation took some dings on the way out of the Dragons. But it’s nothing he hasn’t been through before — if the wounds his career has suffered, self-inflicted or otherwise, were enough to stop him he’d have vanished long ago.

The prizes have always been worth the pain and a grand final win with Brisbane would be the ultimate reward.

He can’t wait out the storm in his second stint as Broncos utility the same way he did the first. Given he turns 35 in March, he does not have time on his side and not even Ben Hunt can wait forever.

There is work to be done and it must be done now and Hunt might be fighting back from a low place, but that’s when he always seem to rise his highest.