The veteran bareback rider will dive back into the ring on New Year’s Day at the Tumbarumba Rodeo after a successful 2018 season that saw him occupy top spot on the rankings for more than six months.

Hall couldn’t quite finish the job and rounded out the season in second place but Tumbarumba’s favourite son is back on the horse and raring to go.

“It was a pretty good year up until October and I’d been doing quite well before those last few rounds,” Hall said.

“I wanted to get that number one spot and I didn’t quite achieve that goal, but it’s a long season and we’re already back into competition now.”

There’s no rest for the wicked after a gruelling 52-round season and Hall is preparing for arguably his busiest month of the new competition.

“We’ve run about three or four since November in the new season and it gets into full flight around Christmas – we’re usually competing twice a week.”

Now, he’ll get the chance to strut his stuff in front of a healthy home crowd on Tuesday with Tumbarumba Rodeo president Tim O’Brien predicting a healthy turnout for the 74th installment.

“We’ve had really good entries so far and you’ll never know how many you get on the day as well,” O’Brien said.

“The great thing about Tumba this time of year is that it’s about 10 degrees cooler than most places around here, so it’s shaping up to be real nice weather.

“It’s green as buggery at the moment and we’ve had families already camped out around the creek for four-five days.”

O’Brien is expecting a strong local contingent to showcase their skills in the middle with Dan Lewis and Hayden Guest highly touted in the saddle bronc.

“We’ve already got things underway with our charity cowboy golf day, which is raising money for Country Hope this year, and the rodeo should be good too.”

“There’s a couple of local boys in there looking at the saddle bronc and Ben obviously having a ride as well, so we’ll see how they all go.

“We’re all really looking forwards to it.”

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