Dave Craven: McNamara will not cut corners as he drives England forward

The Bradford Bulls coach lives in Beverley, just 11 miles from the home of former club Hull.

Yet when Bradford play at the KC Stadium he will make the

73-mile trip along the M62 in the opposite direction to Odsal and board the team coach with his players and staff.

Afterwards, win, lose or draw, rather than taking the easy

15-minute route home, he will return to Bradford on the same coach, get in his car and haul himself back down the same motorway to Beverley, sometimes – if it is a Friday night game – arriving around 2am.

Many Super League counterparts in similar circumstances would simply not go to such lengths. Even after pulling up his driveway in the dead of night, McNamara has been known to stay up pouring over the DVD of the earlier 80 minutes' play.

Diligent and conscientious, his work ethic and dedication to the cause are huge. He does not cut corners.

The main reason James Donaldson – one of many budding youngsters progressing since McNamara transformed the Bulls' Academy objectives – joined is because the coach got in his car to make the

seven-hour round trip to Whitehaven and speak to the highly-rated schoolboy face-to-face, something head coaches at other interested clubs were not prepared to do.

McNamara paid his own way to get to Australia three years ago to study coaching techniques in the NRL and advance his own learning ready to improve the Bulls. Undoubtedly, it will now enhance England.

If anyone was going to put the time, energy and determination in to making England a world force it is the country's new chief – Steve McNamara.

He may not have (so far) enjoyed the success he had hoped for at Bradford in terms of silverware but, over the last four years, he has worked under much different conditions with fewer resources than any of their previous coaches of the Super League era.

He has still managed to leave a legacy of a crop of talented youngsters all making their way through while the new training facility at Tong has also moved the club forward.

Now Bradford begin their search for a new coach and, for the first time in 14 years, will not be promoting from within as they did with McNamara, Brian Noble and Matty Elliott.

Some supporters will clamour for terrace favourites like Jimmy Lowes, Brian McDermott or, no doubt, a return for Noble but now is the time for the club to head to Australia themselves.

In his opening address to the English media as the nation's new coach, McNamara talked in length about how the game over there is still "the leading light" and about how he will be spending more time in the NRL environment trying to glean as much as he can from their practices.

Bradford need only to take a quick look at how Nathan Brown has transformed Huddersfield since arriving from St George and, more recently, how former Melbourne Storm assistant Michael Maguire adopted Noble's under-performing squad at Wigan and instantly converted them to table-toppers, to see how a young coach from the NRL could be the answer to their problems.

With leading Australian players like Matt Orford and Steve Menzies already in their ranks, they could certainly help sell the club to bright and ambitious assistants Down Under.

McNamara has done the hard slog but, with a little more investment, the chance is there for someone to step in and walk the last mile.