Owen Farrell is 'the best rugby league player of the last 10 years'

England’s rugby league captain, Sam Tomkins, believes that Owen Farrell is the ‘best rugby league player of the last ten years’ despite having never played the code as a professional.

Farrell, the son of England and Wigan rugby league legend Andy Farrell, was brought up playing league before following his father’s footsteps into rugby union as a teenager.

Now 31-years-old, Farrell has enjoyed a stellar career in the 15-man code and any prospect of a return to his league roots would be unthinkable, but Catalan Dragons’ star Tomkins highly rates the Saracens star as a league player despite his chosen career in union.

“I think Owen would be the best player in Super League every single year,” Tomkins told Jim Hamilton for The Big Jim Show podcast this week. “He’s that good. He’s the best rugby league player of the last ten years and he’s never played a game.”

“If you had to design a rugby league player, and got all the best rugby league brains in the world and came up with a player, it’d be Owen Farrell, without doubt.

“He’s tough, he’s resilient, he’s very smart, he reads the game very well. He can kick, he can pass. If you run into him, he’ll smash you. He’s got everything. I’m Owen’s biggest fan, as you can probably tell.

“There isn’t a bit of his game that he lacks. He pushes things a bit far sometimes and might [be penalised for] a high tackle, but you need that in league. You have to have that in your armoury and sometimes, you can have amazing players that don’t have that bit of grit that Owen has got.”

“Owen has the perfect blend, I think, and if he had played Super League, I think he’d be the best player we’ve ever seen. His dad was one of, if not the best. His uncle, Sean O’Loughlin, is one of the very best in the last 15 years, so why would he not be? I think he’d be better than his dad, better than his uncle and better than anyone in the last 10 years.”

Tomkins doesn’t expect Farrell to jump ship back to union anytime soon.

“I know that he likes rugby league but I know that he’s ultra-successful in rugby union. If I were him, I’d be doing exactly what he’s doing. He’s enjoying himself. He’s a star of the game and a star all over the world in rugby union.

“If he ever did fancy it at the end of his career, it’d be amazing to see what he could do because I do genuinely believe he’d be an unbelievable rugby league player.”