Why have the majority of the points scored in this years 4 nations come from a play of Sinfield then? How very apt of you to take that literally also, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you have played rugby to any sort of decent level it's a huge lift to have a player in the side who takes responsibility and keeps other players right, wither your refusing to acknowledge this I don't know.

Widdop for the Storm this season: Widdop (25 matches – 16 line-breaks, 16 try assists eight line-break assists and two tries).

Anybody got these stats for Sinfield/Chase?

Sinfield stats from sl.co.u

Games. 27
Tries. 1
Try assists. 22
Goals. 115
Tackle busts. 30
Clean breaks. 7
Offloads 37

What that proves I dunno.

I just thought it'd be interesting to see how these players actually performed during the season to warrant the calls for them to be played/not played.

Whilst Danny Brough proves not to be good enough to be classed as neither. Sinfield is a far superior player to Brough and has proved so for years

Sinfield doesnt need to prove himself better than Lockyer or prove himself a 'real world class player' he just needs to be the best we have available and he is.

Well going by stats chase would be way above windop in the pecking order.

Games. 25
Tries. 12
Try assists.27
Offloads 37
Metres. 2898
Tackle busts . 102
Clean breaks. 14

Even with him in his pomp, we still couldn't the Aussies in a series.

Like I said, he was the exception. It takes 17 exceptional players to beat the Aussies.

Proves nothing in terms of selection criteria IMO.
Rangi Chase for example, had good season stats but they were mainly achieved in the first half of the season when he was in blistering form. That disguises the reality that he wasn't in form at the tail-end of the season.

Sinfield doesn't just point - he creates and scores points


Sinfield had a hand in 62 out of England's 98 points in the tournament with 7 try assists + 1 try created from kick + 15 goals in 4 games.
He also averaged over 26 tackles per game - more than twice as many as any other half-back in the tournament.

If that's not doing well enough at international level I'm really not sure what is.

Comparing stats between Super League and the NRL is impossible because of the quality of the competitions, despite what Eddie says.

In Super League we have teams like Wakefield, Crusaders, Quins, and Salford down at the bottom of the table, while the NRL have Cronulla, Paramatta, Canberra and the Gold Coast, all of which would put 50 on the aforementioned Super League teams.

The quality of our competition isnt good enough, competetive enough, or "British" enough, and that is the bottom line of why we fail at international level, and has been for YEARS! The bottom club in the NRL (Gold Coast) finished with 12 (yes it was 16 really but 4 of those points were for 2 byes) points from 24 games, where the Crusaders only managed 8 from 27 games. This to me is just one example of how the NRL is more competitive. The fact Penrith finished 12th this year having done so well last year is another.

The only reason we are "improving" is because we have players heading over to (or already playing in) the NRL who then come on leaps and bounds, playing in a far superior competition against solid opposition week in week out.

Anybody got the stats for how often Sinfield stuffs up a kick? How fricking hard is it to kick a bomb 15 metres>?

Maybe I'm just a bit slow, but I am starting to wonder if all the Aussie posters on this site are complete nit-picking retards.
Having watched Sinfield all season I'm pretty sure that such stats, if they ever existed, (which I doubt they do for any player), would be pretty favourable for Sinfield.

How frickin easy is it to make your judgment on the basis of the one or two games you've seen him play?

Heh. JB got called an Aussie. Probably the most offensive thing you could say to him.

Sorry, Chief, he's one of yours.

Totally agree, which makes his inability to kick properly during important internationals even more vexatious.

Is Kev a bottler?