Ben Barba

Benjamin Barba (born 13 June 1989) is an Australian former professional dual code rugby league & rugby union footballer who last played for St Helens in the Super League.

He primarily played as a or.

Barba signed with the Bulldogs in 2007 at the age of 18 and joined the club in the middle of the 2007 season.

In his first season at Belmore, Barba played in the Jersey Flegg competition, where he scored 130 points in 11 games.

Barba played 26 games, scored 38 tries, kicked 93 goals and two fields goals for 340 points in his U20s career from 2008 to 2009.

In his second season with the Canterbury side, on 9 January 2008, Barba signed a contract extension keeping him at the club till the end of the 2010 season.

Barba played most of the season in the Toyota Cup Under 20s competition, scoring 26 tries in 27 games.

Canterbury coach Steve Folkes stated that he was still too young and it would be a couple of years till he would become a first grader.

As the season went on, Canterbury kept on losing games and were possibly going to win the wooden spoon resulting in the fans urging that Barba be put into first grade.

Barba made his NRL debut for Canterbury in Round 20, against the St. George Illawarra Dragons in the same week that Sonny Bill Williams quit the club.

They were heavily beaten by St. George Illawarra 30-0 at ANZ Stadium.

At the time he was called up to first-grade, Barba was working at a car wash.

Barba played three more games, but all were losses.

A 36-12 loss in Round 22 to the other desperate team close to winning the wooden spoon, the North Queensland Cowboys, at Suncorp Stadium, saw Barba scoring his first ever first grade try.

In the 2008 NRL season, Barba played four games and scored a try and was named in the 2008 Toyota Cup (Under-20s) Team of the Year.

Barba started the season in first grade under new coach Kevin Moore.

He played off the interchange bench in Round 1 against the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles On 28 March, the night after Canterbury's Round 3 loss against the Gold Coast Titans where he had his first start at five-eighth, Barba got into a drunken fight with Canterbury teammates Jamal Idris and Lee Te Maari at the Wentworthville pub carpark.

Idris punched Barba after he shoved Te Maari against a wall.

After the incident Barba was dropped into NSW Cup and played for the Bankstown City Bulls until Round 18 against the New Zealand Warriors at Mt Smart Stadium.

The match was a memorable one for Barba and for the club.

Canterbury were down 14-12 with a couple of minutes to go, then the Bulldogs made a break and Barba received a pass from Ben Roberts before stepping and diving over for the winning try in Canterbury's 18-14 win.

Barba eventually played the rest of the season in reserve grade.

He played in Canterbury's NSW Cup Grand Final Premiership 32-0 win over the Balmain Ryde Eastwood Tigers where he scored a hat trick of tries.

Barba finished the season with one try from 4 games.

Barba started the season as a regular first grade player.

In Round 3 against the Sydney Roosters, Barba came off the interchange bench and scored a hat trick of tries in the Canterbury club's 60-14 massacre win at ANZ Stadium, earning "The X-Factor" tag after his exciting performance in the match.

In Round 5, Barba scored a sensational try when halftime was approaching in the Bulldogs heartbreaking try on full-time 30-24 loss to the New Zealand Warriors.

In Round 11, Barba started for the first time in the season at in Canterbury's 31-16 loss against the Penrith Panthers.

Barba finished Canterbury's low performing season with him playing in 21 matches and scoring 15 tries, being Canterbury's standout player.

Barba won the Dally M Medal award for Player of the Year in 2012 while he was at the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.

Barba also played for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the Brisbane Broncos in 2014 and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks where he was part of Cronulla's maiden NRL premiership win in the 2016 NRL Grand Final.

In 2018, he won the Man of Steel Award for Super League Player of the Year while playing for St Helens.

Barba is only the second man to win both the Dally M Medal and the Man of Steel award, after Gavin Miller.

Barba also had a brief stint in rugby union with RC Toulonnais.

Barba was born in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

He is of Aboriginal, Afghan, and Torres Strait Islander descent.

At a young age, Barba and his family moved from Darwin in the Northern Territory to Mackay in Queensland.

During his time in Queensland he played all of his junior rugby league for the North Devils, Mackay and attended Mackay State High School and St Patrick's College, Mackay.

He also played Australian Rules at both primary and secondary school competition level in Mackay as a goal kicking forward, though with limited opportunities to participate in the sport, he followed Hawks in the Australian Football League.

He was banned by both the NRL and Rugby Football League in February 2019 following an assault on his partner.