Not this old crap again. He has a passing game, but he doesn't need to add anything to still be a top fullback. Neither Tomkins, Bowen or anyone else will come close to him in positioning, composure, defence, and what he brings to our team.

And yes, he was a far better player on Saturday than Burgess, Williams or Bowen. Had Leeds won that game he would have been given MOM. Without him, we would have been in much deeper trouble Saturday.

So, were going to ignore actual man of the match awards now in deciding who was man of the match?

juan Conetto makes a good point, by following mine.

He could easily have been the game breaker, the most influencial player on the pitch.

It's entirely disengenuous to say all he has to do is run 20 metres. If support play was as simple as that why weren't more players queuing up and why doesn't mCguire have the legs to do it anymore?

You talk about a man crush- huh! How can Hardaker be the best player on the pitch when the most effective fullback was Bowen? who scored two tries and created another. When your hero Hardaker aimlessly hoofed the ball straight to Bowen who then gave Zak a quick lesson in how to creatively return the ball from fullback with the vision and pass that put Burgess into space who then compounded Hardaker's error by wrong footing him leaving him on his backside.

Williams who was awarded the MOM was too quick for Hardaker to recover from being out of position and outpaced him to the corner. There was another occasion when Hardaker had made a long run with plenty of tackle busts but as usual went to ground with the ball when a pass could have meant a Leeds score close to the line.

You seem to regard effort above skill and for you it seems a strong physical robust display with plenty of metres gained and tackle busts equates with him somehow being the best player. Hardaker did all these things against Wigan for which I give him credit, but IMO he continually shows a lack of enough creative skill to be considered a class player and he shows all the hallmarks of playing for himself above the team. It would be interesting to see the stats for the the leading players who die with the ball.




..and we all know how accurate your opinion is!

Sorry to derail this thread, but you are wrong. Sam has not been found wanting in the NRL with regards to either catching or tackling.

Hardaker makes as many errors (just check the figures if you don't believe me) as Sam and yet can offer very little in the way of tries or assists.

Hardaker is an excellent player by the way, I'd be happy to have him in my team - if Tomkins was injured.

Well at least anyone on here can find me at matches, instead of posting on here whilst the match is on going, like you. So yes, my opinion on it would be far greater than yours mate.

Hardaker's pass to Briscoe for his try last year v. Warrington was nearly identical to Bowen's for Burgess' try. There's probably other instances as well.

It was better than that. Bowen had to make his pass as Burgess had a yawning great gap to go into. That try was down to the Leeds poor defence rather than the pass.

He'd have had to catch the ball first, and not fall over after doing so. A couple of things that have not been givens in big games lately.

I'll take it back then if i'm "wrong".

Except i'm not, you're talking rubbish. So I won't.

Sorry but anyone who makes claims like "Hardaker is the 8th best fullback in SL" really can't be taken seriously when discussing him.

Did you ever list those 7 players? Is Bowen one now he's finally had a half decent game, 18 months into his contract?

I'll tell you what Matt Bowen was missing Saturday and he's missed it for a long time.......

His neck!! What happened to it? Where is it?

If you're going to attempt to tell me you believe Stevo gets his Sky man of the match awards bob on every weekend G1, I'm going to assume you've got the giant wooden spoon out of the cupboard again for stirring purposes.

The game at Hull in question, he scored the last two tries at a time when Leeds were absolutely dominant in the game. The game was turned around by two key contributions each from Singleton (the run for McGuire's try, then the try of his own) and Watkins (similar) earlier in the half. Added to that was a tremendous defensive effort to keep it to 12-0 at half time despite a heavy weight of possession and field position in the home side's favour, in which I'm pretty sure Burrow didn't play any part from memory.

You'd have to be off in cloud cuckoo land (or Stevo) to regard Burrow as the outstanding performance of the 34 on the field that night. As we all know though, Stevo has his favourites when it comes to nominating man of the match, and it's usually whoever the dominant dummy half was in the last ten minutes of the game that sticks in his memory.