A YEAR ago, Ben Hunt could not get a start at halfback. Now the Broncos will need to move quickly to head off any threats of the emerging Brisbane star being poached by rival clubs.
Hunt was named man of the match again on Sunday as he led the Broncos to a brilliant 36-10 win over Manly at Suncorp Stadium.
The halfback has been the undoubted find and star of Brisbane’s season so far, thriving under the new responsibility and faith from coach Anthony Griffin to make the No.7 jersey his own.
Hunt is signed to the Broncos only until the end of 2015, and was recently listed as one of four playmakers – including Origin duo Daly Cherry-Evans and Trent Hodkinson – set to spark interest when rival clubs can begin to poach talent for 2016 in November this year.
Hunt has recently commenced building a home in Brisbane and his management is keen to begin talks this season about an upgraded deal to secure the 24-year-old’s long term future at Red Hill.
This time last year Hunt was struggling to get 20 minutes of game time each week as the understudy hooker. Now he is rated among the top echelon of halfbacks in the NRL.
“I’m really happy the club stuck by me and I hung around and Hook (Griffin) gave me the opportunity and I’m just really happy to be leading the team around at the moment,” Hunt said. “(Griffin) always had faith in in me, I guess he just wanted me to work on the things I needed to work on in my game.
“It was just good to get a full pre-season in that halfback position.
Hunt agreed with Griffin’s summation that Sunday was Brisbane’s most complete 80-minute performance of the season and said the attack was starting to find its groove after some inconsistent efforts.
“It’s starting to feel pretty good … I’m feeling really good at the moment,” he said. “I think our attack is starting to come together week by week.
“We’ve had patches of good football but this week we really played well for 80 minutes which was really pleasing.
“We talked about it at half-time how we had got out to leads before and let teams back into it, so it was a credit to the boys that we did that today and stuck it to them.”