Actually he's been OK under the high ball all this season. Not the best, but certainly not a great worry. After dropping the first one in this big match it did dent his confidence. Although a few minutes later he did take a great one.

I agree this season he's been letting Richards and Charnley run it back a lot more than I'd like. I thought maybe he had a slight injury towards the end of the season but didn't hear anything about it, Maybe not. He should run it back as often as possible since that's his greatest strength.

Exactly. You put it a little more succintly than me

No doubt the lad is a talent....but if any SL coach is worth his salt next season he will have his best field kicker practicing those high bombs with a good kick chase from the remainder of his team.

Just have to hope we don't have a biased video ref

After watching a whole season of Wigan matches I've not noticed any greater susceptibility to bombs by Sam Tomkins than most other SL fullbacks. He's not as good as some but better than others. I was trying to get stats for his success rate at catching bombs, but there doesn't seem to be any easily available. However, based on just a count of just general errors, he compares favourably with rlBrent Webbrl and rlBrett Hodgsonrl. Not much difference really.

Oh I'm sure you're right......but the others are not the major threat that Tomkins is attacking from FB and therefore it's not [ias[/i paramount to test them in this same specific way.
The lad has to be negated by the opposition somehow and I think the New Zealanders and especially the Aussies have shown how best to do that.

It's not just the high kick, but the accompanying kick chase that has to be perfected.

I thought, discounting the couple of errors, it was striking how quickly the Aussies got men around Tomkins when he fielded kicks to shut down his threat on the counter attack. It was clearly a threat they were aware of and they handled it very well. In credit to Sam Tomkins, its probably been a while since we had a player that the Aussies felt motivated to single out tactically in that way. If you leave the kid a gap in your line he'll be gone and he's lethal when he gets into broken field situations. You have to give some credit to the Aussies for not letting that happen.