Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
NZ NZ

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

By Ian Cameron
England rugby players Owen Farrell (C) and George Ford (R) chat to former Australian rugby league great Andrew Johns (L) / AFP / WILLIAM WEST (Photo credit should read WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

ADVERTISEMENT

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.

Video Spacer

Video Spacer

“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.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“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.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Join free

Aotearoa Rugby Podcast | Episode 6

Sam Warburton | The Big Jim Show | Full Episode

Japan Rugby League One | Sungoliath v Eagles | Full Match Replay

Japan Rugby League One | Spears v Wild Knights | Full Match Replay

Boks Office | Episode 10 | Six Nations Final Round Review

Aotearoa Rugby Podcast | How can New Zealand rugby beat this Ireland team

Beyond 80 | Episode 5

Rugby Europe Men's Championship Final | Georgia v Portugal | Full Match Replay

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

35 Go to comments
TRENDING
TRENDING ‘It’s about his career’: Why NRL star Payne Haas could jump codes ‘It’s about his career’: Why NRL star Payne Haas could jump codes
Search