Sam Tomkins is an amazing attacking player. He is not an amazing defensive player, certainly not under a high ball. The Aussies exposed that flaw in his game in the last four nations. He jumped for balls and missed by miles, he let balls bounce that he should have caught. Unless he has much improved since then in that area, which is of vital importance if you are playing full back, then he is not the finished article as a rugby league player. He is very good, no brilliant in attack and truly gifted but Rugby League is a two way game and he is definitely flawed defensively.

So true, it is a long time since our pack came out on top over the course of the 80 mins.

If only we had Mickey Mac, then we'd do em easy.

shaun wane said it best today.

Sam didn't do too badly under the high ball from what I saw today.

He might not outplay Smith, but he'll do his best to batter him and the rest of their side.

I always though of you as a bit of an empty head tbh.



That is the first sensible post I have seen from you.



Fair play

Another interpretation could be that he's not the finished article as a full-back, and perhaps never will be. The ability to judge and time a jump for a high ball is quite specialized and he'll almost certainly never be a Steve Hampson in that regard. If we're talking about the complete player as a full-back, I'd agree he's flawed, but as a player in general, his sum total set of abilities is up there with the best - nobody is the 'perfect player' ( apart from me of course, its just I got too distracted by women and drink to play professionally ). His tackling is actually very good indeed relative to body weight ( on that measure, Rob Burrow beats everyone )

Got a few bites

His positional play in defence when I have seen him is pretty good, he has always been there abouts when a Try is scored against his team (I am talking mainly four Nations)



He has not had the body weight or technique to stop several of those tries but points for trying.

The only negative has been a couple of incidents where he has been late and come over the top with his knees as he did with a try Morris scored in a Test last year.

That certainly makes a comparison with Slater fair then, he's always happy to put the studs in on a man trying to put the ball down.

Not in recent times Browny, in the past he tried to get his feet under the grounding of the Ball, that was some time ago and the Laws were changed in Oz to address this issue.

He has never been a player to come in with knees to the back as a player grounds the ball, he had that a few years ago himself in a Test with a length of the field try with some no name trying to injure him as he was over the line. Almost caused a fight at the time.