Watched lots of the doggies this year and thought Barba's defence was solid as a rock in general. Looked like he'd improved massively since last year.

Barba’s a great player don’t get me wrong,

I don’t think either are terrible defensively, just neither are great. Both have a tendency to make some silly silly mistakes and both can have games where they have been got at. I think both have that issue where they will make lots of mistakes all at once rather than spread throughout the year. As a pretty extreme example dropping 5 catches over 2 games and none for the next 9 sticks in the mind more than a player dropping 1 every 2 games, even though both would make the same amount of errors over a ten game period.

Brilliant, another thread where people can exaggerate Tomkins' negative points because they don't like him.

You'd think with some of the comments made that Tomkins dropped kicks all the time yet as all Wigan fans know, he catches the vast majority, including some very difficult ones. He's dropped a few in some high profile games and that's what sticks in people's minds.

No one mentions the Challenge Cup semi final against Saints in 2011 when he was rock solid, took several very difficult catches under pressure, but dropping an incredibly difficult one in the 2012 CC semi final makes him terrible apparently.

If he couldn't deal with kicks, he wouldn't be playing fullback, it's that simple. He isn't a fullback simply because of his attacking play, he's a fullback because that's where he plays his best rugby. The good things he does in defence are conveniently overlooked.

The vast majority of errors that Tomkins makes are the sort you expect from strike players and playmakers and happen when Wigan are attacking.

Erm, what?

Greg Inglis is the best for me.

Tomkins is def top 10 and I would have him in the top 5.

Ben Barba over the last 2 years has been great but last season he was on some different level. He does freakish things!!

I think Billy Slater, Ben Barba and Greg Inglis are in a class of their own at the moment. After that I'd say Tomkins, Bowen & Stewart are at a pretty similar level with eachother, consistently above the rest & have advantages over each other but you can't really make an argument for any of them being better than the big 3.

Hayne's a total wildcard. Sometimes carries the Eels but also disappoints a fair amount of the time. Probably not helped by the poor performances around him at times.

I'd agree, really worked hard in that area of the game in pre season.

Inglis is a freak of a player but I don't rate him that high at fullback, yet.

There's still a few area's in his game he can improve on, his ability to change direction been one.

All of the top 5 are very good defenders. I don't think that Sam Tomkins has proven himself as efficient as them in defence.

He's generally very solid. He screws up about as much as Slater, but because Tomkins biggest mistakes were in a 4 nations final & a challenge cup semi final they seem more prominent imo

In other words his defence is about as good as Bowens...

I thought the same. Still a superb full back for his age. Thought he was unlucky to miss out on a Man of Steel nomination.

he's decent but doesn't break into the top 10 for me, there are better fullbacks not even in 10.

that top 3 is a pretty stellar. Tomkins is quite rightly just outside that bracket. He just needs to have a few outstanding matches in big games (internationals against Aus/NZ, finals etc) to knock on the door but all this criticism of his defence etc is pretty laughable in my opinion.

The changes in the game have given us a pretty freakish era of attacking full-backs, one where the likes of Josh Hoffman, William Zillman, Natahan Gardner, Lachlan Coote, Anthony Minichello etc can't make a top 10 list.

There's also a load of outside backs in the NRL (Krisnan Inu, Reece Robinson, Michael Gordon, Brett Morris, Jason Nightingale, Nathan Merritt etc) who's best position is probably full-back but don't get to play there often.

I'd have Tomkins in the top 5 but he's the only real contender from SL at the moment.