Jamie Jones-Buchanan claims Super League star is “world class”

Super League is awash with huge stars at the likes of Leeds Rhinos, Wigan Warriors, Warrington Wolves, St Helens, Hull FC and across the entire competition in fact.

However, there is one position that seems to play home to an endless stream of stars is the fullback role.

We have Jack Welsby at St Helens, two at Wigan in Bevan French and Jai Field, Matt Dufty at Warrington, Jake Connor and Tui Lolohea at Huddersfield Giants, Ryan Brierley at Salford Red Devils, Tex Hoy at Hull FC, the list is endless.

But there is one player who has been a star in Super League for longer than all of these and that is former Wigan star, current Catalans Dragons star and two time Man of Steel Sam Tomkins.

Ian Watson recently had huge praise for Tomkins.

“I remember him coming through in his debut and scoring four or five tries or something like that in a Challenge Cup game, I think it was,” Watson said.

“And you could see from then he had real potential and then obviously went out to full-back and he mastered that role. He’s been the best full-back in the country for a long, long time and his ability to adapt his game as well.

“When maybe you think he might have lost a bit of speed, It’s like his skill level is always high. When obviously you think he’s lost a little bit in terms of his turn of pace from when he was younger days, his skill level’s got better, his reading of the game’s got better, his positional play’s got better.

“He’s one of them top athletes. You can see why he’s been probably the number one in the country for a long period of time and why Sean went up to the World Cup last year, to be fair, because he’s smart, so probably second to none in the game.”

Following this, in the year we will see Tomkins retire, he was described as “world class” by Jamie Jones-Buchanan on Sky Sports.

This came after he and Mitchell Pearce kept up Catalans’ run of winning every game the two have started this year which is frustratingly only at single figures.