Quote: Superted "Genuine question that I don't know the answer to, is it possible to find out how many of those tries and assists were against Leeds, Saints or Wire - would be good to see what the ratio is like (and not just trying to be negative, I genuinely would be interested to know, as there seems to be a view that he only really performs regularly against the weaker teams).
Comparing Hardaker and Tomkins on tries/try assists only doesn't really work, as their teams use them differently. As has been pointed out, Tomkins was the focal point of your attack, your main scoring weapon - Leeds don't use Hardaker that way, sure he's still good in attack, but his defence is his number 1 priority, followed by starting our sets well with yardage (along with Hall and Briscoe) - clearly he also gets involved in attacking sets, but Leeds have other weapons in attack so that the ball isn't always heading to Hardaker to finish things off - Hall, Watkins, Briscod and even Moon to a degree are seen as the 'finishers' more often than not.
That's why a comparison isn't really that useful, but if you are trying to compare, you need to compare all facets, offensively and defensively to get a more rounded picture and then make a judgement. In truth, Sam is better for Wigan, Zak is better for Leeds based on their respective playing styles..... Neither would be as effective at the opposite club - though I would argue that Hardaker would probably do the better of the two if they swapped clubs just because he 'ticks more boxes' as a fullback IMO, and Sam wouldn't necessarily be able to do what Zak does for Leeds in terms of the hard graft.'"
I'm not comparing stats at all. Just showing that for someone who was supposed to have been controlled/ contained he did pretty damn well. As for who would do better, nobody will ever know, and quite frankly who cares! Against the bigger teams I don't know if you can get those stats, but I'm not that bothered, we won the double, with him as our main attacking weapon.