To bring about his desire to become a successful jump jockey, rising conditional J P McNamara could do worse than follow the examples of two other John Patrick Macs familiar to aficionados of sport played on turf.

One, McManus, cool-blooded and calculating, is responsible for a shortage of toilet paper in bookmakers' hotels during Cheltenham Festival week. The other, McEnroe, whose claret ran too hot most of the time, had instinctive poise but had the same effect on the retired servicemen and women of Wimbledon.

West Witton trainer Ferdy Murphy, who imported the 20year-old from Shinrone, Co Offaly, on the advice of Irish horse trader Tom Hogan in October last year, has no doubt his man will not fail for his work ethic or, for that matter, for grey cells.

"He has loads of balls and he has a brain as well," says Murphy, a native of Wexford. "He is a bit out of the ordinary in the sense that he is a real grafter - he works his arse off. We had a few claimers in the yard but we wanted a fella with a bit of `oomph'. This guy came highly recommended and has every intention of going to the top.

"A few lads up the north won't be around much longer and there are a lot of good lads coming along, but he is as good as any and better than most. He is going to be the next big thing."

McNamara learned to ride in the traditional school of show jumping, hunting and point to points before taking a job with Carlow trainer Sean Treacy.

"I was with Sean Treacy for two years and he was like a father to me," recalls the 3 lb claimer, who turned from amateur to conditional this autumn.

"The way I look at it, you don't gain anything by lying in bed, so I don't mind working hard. I like to turn up every Sunday morning in the yard and get on with it, and show them I'm keen."

With over 40 wins under Rules here and in Britain, McNamara concedes there is plenty of ground between him and the summit of his profession - even between him and the job as first jockey to Murphy's Wynbury Stable, a seat occupied by Adrian Maguire.

Murphy sees no better tutor than Maguire, never a winner of the numbers game for the jockeys' title but universally acknowledged as one of the finest National Hunt riders of the time, to refine McNamara's raw talent. "Adrian has the choice of who he will ride, which is not a bad thing for J P, to get somebody of Adrian's calibre to be sub to. The thing about Adrian is that he also works his arse off. He is here schooling two times a week and is in the yard for half-six. Swindon is a four-hour drive away, so you can imagine what time he leaves. J P can see that, and they feed off each other."

That Maguire could ever learn anything from McNamara excites his understudy. "Sometimes he will ask me about a horse that he does not know and that I do, and ask me how to ride the horse," says McNamara.

"I never thought that a top jockey like Adrian, who is a brilliant horseman and an absolute natural, would ask me how to ride a horse that he didn't know about. That makes me feel about two stone better."

Murphy argues that his jockey's success on 33 to 1 shot Wynbury Flyer at Doncaster on Saturday epitomises McNamara's outlook, adding: "J P gave him an absolute peach at Doncaster. When there is an opportunity, or half an opportunity, or the smell of an opportunity, he is in to take it."

McNamara's demeanour, which is polite and co-operative, led one of his colleagues, stable jockey to a leading Middleham yard, to think he was a pushover.

"At Market Rasen a couple of weeks ago this jockey was warning me to keep in and I told him where to get off. When he came in he came over and was going to hit me because he didn't think I would stand my corner.

"He thought he could bully me, but I stood up and said, `You're not worth hitting'. He calmed down and we get on fine now."

Shades of another J P Mac.