The Super League Dream Team has been announced with 13 players being honoured near Manchester at a media event on Monday afternoon.
The line-up was mostly made up of players from sides that will be competing in the play-offs, with League Leaders’ Shield winners Wigan Warriors having four representatives, while Warrington Wolves had three, Hull KR and Salford Red Devils had two and men from St Helens and Leeds Rhinos made up the roster.
It will be a while longer until we learn who this season’s Man of Steel will be, but before the leaderboard went dark it seemed there were three clear candidates for the award.
Marc Sneyd has enjoyed one of the best years of his career with Salford, leading Paul Rowley’s side to a fourth placed finish in Super League. However, the half-back has competition from Hull KR’s sparkling 23-year-old Mikey Lewis and Warrington Wolves’ lively number one Matt Dufty.
The trio will all have their eyes on reaching the Super League Grand Final, with their main focus being collecting silverware with their respective sides.
The Man of Steel award is a special one, though, and the eventual winner will undoubtedly be honoured to collect the gong, which marks a wonderful campaign on an individual level.
With that in mind, we spoke to a handful of Dream Team members at Monday’s Super League media event in Worsley to get their picks on who should be recognised as the competition’s player of the season.
Here’s what they had to say:
Marc Sneyd: “You probably can’t look past Mikey Lewis at Hull KR, he’s been really good this year and especially the second half of the season I think he’s found his form. He’s a young lad, he’s really good and he’s been incredible to be fair this second half of the season.
Elliot Minchella: “Mikey Lewis.”
Mikey Lewis: “I reckon Matt Dufty is up there, he’s been very good this year. He’d be my pick.”
Rhyse Martin: “I don’t know. Sneydy was up there midway through the year, I’m not too sure if anyone has pulled him back. Mikey has been killing it the last few months, he could have clawed some points back. I’ll go Mikey. Hopefully he gets it and he can give me a heap of short balls next year.”
Matty Ashton: “Matt Dufty.”
