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.

Trying to be objective, I would have to point out that Brett Stewart and Matthew Bowen have all of Tomkins' attacking skills, but are bettter at taking the high ball and as defenders. I also believe that both these Australians are faster than Tomkins. Bowen can give many wingers a head start and then run them down. Tomkins is famous for his sidestep but Bowen's sidestep is faster than Tomkins'.

I would love to see the top ten run a 100 metre race. My prediction would be that Slater, Barba and Bowen would be the top three in such a sprint, though I don't know in what order.

i am sure i read somewhere in the pess over here that inglis used to run the 100m , and he did it in less than 11seconds, not bad for big chap

Isn't Hayne a decent sprinter too? Obviously he and Inglis aren't close to the correct physique for sprinting at the moment but if they geared themselves for it they'd probably be the best sprinters, though obviously the smaller guys like Slater, Barba, Tomkins and Bowen should get them over shorter distances.

I recall reading an article about 20 yrs ago where all of the GB team did timed sprits over 10m, 20m, 30m etc to 100m. Some did better over shorter sprints, some over longer sprints but they reckon 40m was the key distance as the quickest players here (Offiah, Edwards, Schofield, can't remember who else) were all the most prolific try scorers at the time.

Gavin Dodd innit.