Think you may have to be locked away in a darkened room to calm down if we lift the trophy a week today. Nurse with sedative stand by.

Daryl Clark.

kevin brown for me

I'm going to put my hand up for James Roby.
His club's finished top of the pile and we've had a lot of injury problems in the other pivot positions. At times he's looked exhausted, but continued to play 80 minutes every week.

1054 Tackles Made (top of the pops), including a whopping 65 in the last game against Hudds.
7 Tries and 20 try assists.
2980 metres made.

His value to Saints is immeasurable and they're (until the play offs) number 1. He's just been given their player of the year.

If it isn't Darryl Clark there's something seriously wrong with the game..the lads being immense.

Sure, he would be a worthy winner.But lets not exaggerate, JP,Hill or Clark have all got an equal case for winning. It must be tight

Brown Shenton Roby have been excellent

Clark has been great but is nailed on to win Young Player I think.

So between Chris Hill and Jamie Peacock. Either would deserve it whichever wins. I think Hill is amazing!but that's my Wire bias calling that.

His attacking stats are very good, but his overall game is nowhere near Roby, in fact I would say Hodgson has the edge on him as well.

Chris Hill for me

I made this point to someone else. Clark and Roby are two different types of player.

Everything Saints do is off the back of Roby. He makes more dummy runs than any other hooker in the league and they play very much direct and then spread it out later on.

By comparison, Cas don't; look at their stats at hooker for any of our players - we barely register at dummy half because we like to play open rugby and spread the ball out across the line.

Allowing for this helps to understand the stats a bit more. Roby's defensive stats are excellent, no denying and he is clearly a benchmark in Super League. However, in attack it's easy to see why he clocks up so many carries and metres when taking into account the above. Not a criticism, just pointing it out that he's the pivot that makes Saints tick. Despite this, he's only made 60m more and he plays 80 minutes every week too (again, another point to consider when judging stats).

As for Hodgson, Clark beats him in attack and defence. He has 80 missed tackles compared to Clark's 31 or alike and he's only made more tackles because KR have had to do a lot more defending (again adding some context to the stats).

Clark for MoS
Burgess for Young Player

C Hill

Stats are not your friend in this argument...

ignoring the Roby vs Clark argument (which should of been killed dead at the weekend) what you say about Hodgeson is false...

Hull Kr as a team have made LESS tackles than Castleford this season (8044 vs 7957) so as a percentage Hodgson is getting through a much greater proportion of work compared to Clark. In attack, Hodgson has only made around 100m less over the season, and a similar strike ratio (11:11 vs 13:10 try's:try assists) - there is little to choose between them statistically... At best Clark is marginally ahead, but it is far from clear cut...

Since you pull up one thing in particular in missed tackle, one of the major arguments I've seen made in favour of Clark is that he plays x minutes less than Roby so it's not fair to compare Roby's work (almost twice the number of tackles) to his. Surely the flip side of that argument is that his tackle percentages should be up because he's doing far less work?

You're not accounting for the missed tackles too, which don't go into the tackles column. KR have missed far more tackles than Cas and so the total tackle attempts (tackles made, missed tackles) is more for KR.

Even accounting for that, Hull Kr have made 100 tackle attempts more than Castleford, Hodgson has still made 200 tackles more, and is thus making a far greater overall contribution in defence - as per my original statement.