Laughable. Next they’ll be telling us that Kendall is the best referee for the Grand Final.
Laughable. Next they’ll be telling us that Kendall is the best referee for the Grand Final.
As others have mentioned, it exposes the flaws in the system.
I've never really been a fan of awards for individuals in a team sport like rugby, everyone plays a part whether its a second rower topping the tackle count each week, a prop making big metres or a winger scoring spectacular tries.
Dream Teams, MoS wont matter on Friday
The whole game is getting like an under 8’s, next year we will have most improved player, player who’s mum makes the best cakes, special award to the lad who’s dad drives the minibus etc......
This has devalued the award too much.
Rightly or wrongly, I always think MOS should at least go to a player that the NRL would wish to snap up. Like it or not, they're the benchmark and attempt to hoover up our best players (thankfully with the likes of Robes, Newlove and others they're not always succesful in doing so!). In line with this, could anyone really see NRL clubs looking at either McShane or Farrell at the present time? Can't see it myself. I could understand them swooping for French, Seizer (apologies if spelt incorrectly!) or Coote, or indeed many others not shortlisted.
Its been hard for any player to stand out given the amount of games on such a short space of time. They've been flogged at times. My pick would have been French based on the 19 games. For me he's made the biggest impact on the league. Plenty of solid performers. Had the pandemic not hit, I'm sure we'd have been seeing a different winner.
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French is a player who's grown into the season, but when you analyse he's only shone in a handful of games. His advantage is that they've mostly been late in the season so they're fresh in people's minds.
I'll probably be accused of bias, but I think Walmsley has been the standout performer over the course of the season.
McShane? Best player in Superleague? On what planet?
I was dumbfounded when he was short-listed. He's a decent player but there are other, better 9s in Superleague, and some better players at Cas, and Cas had a very poor season. Roby, for one, is in a different league to McShane. How do they come up with this ridiculous decision?
It goes without saying I hate Farrell as he plays for Wigan!
But as an RL fan I will concede he's been one of the stand-out performers. I agree with an earlier statement he's not good enough / big enough for International RL but he's had a stellar season for Wigan and had his best for quite a few years so I wouldn't have complained if he'd won it.
McShane is one of Cas's most consistent performers but MoS - you're having a laugh!!
This is the problem with the current points system. Average players in a poor side pick up more points than say someone like Walmsley as he’s fighting for points with Coote, Lomax, Roby, Makinson etc. What is ridiculous though is the points system only gives you a top 3 or top 5 to choose from, it doesn’t go to the player who finishes 1st in the points. Ifyou get a bang average player on the final shortlist just do the sensible thing and don’t give them it. Every other finalist was more deserving than McShane plus probably at least a dozen others. In all honesty, without the points system, if you’re sitting down at the end of the year thinking of the best players over the last season McShane probably wouldn’t have made the 2nd choice dream team let alone the 1st choice or Man of Steel.
As a side note I’ve never agreed with the awards being before the grand final either. For example Lam has won coach of the year, but if Saints win the grand final it’s impossible to say he deserves it more than Woolf. Same for man of steel, often really difficult to split players and a grand final performance could separate a player from the pack. I don’t see how having the awards the Monday night after the grand final would be any more difficult.
Forwards win games. The backs decide by how much.
Farrell plays well above his weight, see him quite often outside his house on Wigan Lane going towards Standish. Every time I see him my first thoughts are always he's not big enough for a rugby league forward, he lost a lot of weight when he had that illness and has not really put on much bulk. Can't fault his stamina and workmate, sometimes he is very underrated but his stats this year have been excellent.
Also as it's points per game this year you could have a situation where Walmsley gets 2 points each against Wigan and Warrington, but Mcshane gets 3 points against Hull KR and they'd be higher
In a way saints are handicapped because of the greatest number of talented players we have and the points are more widely distrubuted. The usual suspects are Coote, Walmsley, Roby, Lomax, Grace and Percival other teams usually only have half that number.
For quite a few years now Roby has the biggest handicap of all due the high standards he displays every week, when awarding points they are quite blasé with Roby because its 9 out of 10 or 10 out of 10 standard.