yet edwards is still winning in the pole which suggests more people think edwards was the better player. your not telling me there is more wigan fans on this website than all the other teams fans from this website?

well 1 person voted for edwards because he was a better coach. With people voting on that basis its not a surprise edwards is ahead.

had this poll been done in 1996 it would 2 to 1 in favour of schoey. a lot of people will have voted for edwards because schoey is such a douch now.

And a lot will have voted for Schofield because he is the one that did not play for Wigan.

Totally different players, and hard to compare. Over a season Edwards would give you much better value. Schofield certainly had great skill.

It's a crime that Edwards is not still in RL, and that Schofield is such a bitter man.

What a totally ridiculous argument this is. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of fans from this site couldn't give a toss about who was better, any more than I can give a toss who wins this vote. The 'pole' (sic) has attracted just over 150 people, 15 times less than London's last home crowd, a pretty meaningless sample IMO.

Furthermore we don't know why people voted the way they did. Maybe a few more Wigan fans care about it than Leeds fans do. The ones on these boards are let's face it, very precious and defensive about their glorious 'fios' past.

What we do know is among those that are prepared to articulate their opinion, and particularly among impartial fans, the overwhelming arguments are massively in favour of Schofield, and that no-one has yet to come up with a convincing argument that Edwards was any good outside of a totally dominant Wigan team.

No you're quite right. It's obvious that whoever gets the most votes in this poll is the de-facto, for-all-time, better-of-the-two, no matter what other methods there may be evaluate and compare them. Call it a RL version of [iTruthiness[/i.

As much as it pains me to do it been a Wigan fan I've got to vote for Schoey, even though the bloke is an absolute prize pillock now he remains one of the most gifted players British RL has ever produced. I remember as a kid the sense of exitement everytime he got the ball knowing he might just produce something unbelievable much the same way it is with a certain Mr. Tomkins these days.

Have a look at the video sharing site at Schofield's 4 tries against NZ in one game, and his tries from right centre against Australia on tour in 1984. Moments of undeniable world class play, whilst he was still at Hull. England would kill to have a threequarter with that kind of impact today.

I remember when he joined Leeds and his debut against the Auckland Warriors who toured that year. Before he got taken off with an ankle injury he'd scored two tries and looked dangerous every time he got the ball. I'd never seen a centre able to be that influential before.

As he slowed down (and filled out a bit) he moved to stand off, and went from a one-dimensional playmaker to one capable of completely dominating games at his best. The problem he had at Leeds was being surrounded by a vastly inferior side compared to Wigan and even Sts at times. He compounded this by starting to - IMO - showboat too much at Leeds, and generally sulk post the signing of Hanley.

What relevance Schofield's off-field persona has to any debate as to his quality as a player I have no idea. At least he's still in and around RL, unlike the apparently saintly Edwards.

Schofield scored the greatest try I have ever seen against the Aussies in 84 on his 1st GB tour and he was 18.

ok so your just going to denie the whole reason to carry out a pole? if you just wanted to know opinions scrap the pole and just ask, maybe some people cant be bothered to go into detail about their decisions and have it scrutinised and defend it. edwards was a wigan born and bred player just went to other clubs for the cash is that not good enough? yeah he wasn't the flashy benji marshal type he was the player that kept a team structured and that wasn't worth praising back then and you rarely see it praised now as the goons at sky only like off the cuff or scoot athon.

people keep saying watch this on youtube well how about you watch all the full games and not selected highlights by this method of judging, amos roberts would be the 2nd best player ever to play superleague after sam tomkins watch the amos golden touch i think its called.

like i have said before different positions different roles people have different opinions neither are wrong if thats what you believe but this pole is showing so far more people think edwards was better and it is very hard to argue against hes record.

this is where you will go on about ian kirke must be the best prop in superleague, difference is a prop isn't as important as a playmaker/organiser just look at melbourne storm last season may not have won the comp but was minor premiers with adam walnough and brain norrie upfront just incase you dont know who he is, he wouldnt get in wakefields team. craig bellamy is the best coach in the world and hes opinion is have a strong 1,7,9 and you have the basis to have a good team.

If any of these polls ever attracted a substantial enough sample to give a real indication of the opinions of most fans I would say they're very worthwhile. Unfortunately they don't. They attract very few people, most of whose views are likely to be subjectively biased towards which clubs they favour.
Polls on these boards are in that sense a bit of fun and little more.
Similarly I wouldn't choose selected clips on YouTube as an indicator. If I did the one clip of Rob Burrow's tries up to 2007 would probably announce him as the greatest try-scoring wizard in the game ever.
In both cases the problem is the size/selectivity of the sample.

Think you're getting confused about the Kirke argument (although the whole paragraph is virtually unreadable). That was merely a riposte to the ludicrous concept that the number of gongs a player picks up is an indication of that person's individual ability over any given player with less wins.

The Joe Lydon one was better.

None were good enough to win a series and that is the problem.

Corrected as of 3.31pm - 5th April.

Still a false argument IMO

Going to need a bit more than that to go on Ovavoo

I speak of the one were Shoefield is involved 3 times along with Drummond. Starts around 20m out from GB line and includes 8-9 passes and I am pretty sure it was voted try of the decade back in 1994.

One of the best tries ever... never tire of watching it

I assume Ovavoo is speaking of the ’86 Lydon try where he went in at the corner (was that Maine Road, I was definitely at that game). Lydon’s was a good try but the Schofield one was a class apart... superb team try

Scofields try was a cracker. I nearly lost my false teeth watching it. Lydons try was something special as well. The way he rounded Gary Jack was outstanding.

hold my hands up the majority are saying schofield was the better player now.

maybe but that is the whole point of having this poll.

No, that is the whole [ipointlessness[/i of having this poll.
Had the poll stopped at 9.00 this morning you could have claimed a 'victory' for the Edwards camp. If it stops now you could claim victory for Schofield. Who knows which of the two you could claim as the 'best player' tomorrow?

Like I said it's a bit of fun, but IMO the result (at any given time) is still pretty irrelevant.

has anyone made a credible case for edwards being better than schofield yet?

Has anyone made a credible case for him not being better than Schofield



Saying Schofield is better than Edwards is like saying Benji Marshall is better than Thurston. You just can't say it, they are different players. Just because Thurston isn't as flash does not mean he isn't as good.

It comes down to who you would rather have in your team. Edwards every time. If you wanted to win that is.

In your opinion, but not in the opinion of some of the greats of the game:
According to Billy Boston the greatest player of that era was Brett Kenny.
When Kenny was asked who was the best British player he'd ever faced his reply was "Garry Schofield – he was a great player and a real thorn in the side of anyone he came across. He could score tries from nothing when he was a young centre and then he went on to become a very good stand-off and a very good leader."

This is a hugely frustrating argument... Edwards has won more medals than any other player so he must be a ‘winner’ and a top quality player

I think that there is a very strong argument to say that Roger Federer is the best tennis player ever as he has won the most grand slam titles or Jack Nicklaus the best ever golfer as he has won the most majors but Rugby League is a team sport and you cannot use the number of trophies won as a measure of individual quality or this strange concept of being a ‘winner’ – this argument doesn’t stand up to any kind of logic

If you wanted to use a metric to decide who was the better player (rather than a subjective opinion), why don’t we use which player was chosen by a national coach or selection committee to represent his country the most times, I’m pretty sure those coaches knew a thing or two about playing ability?

Let me state for the record, I (like many others) think that Edwards was a very good player but Schofield was clearly better as has been shown by his international and Australian domestic success when you can take the all conquering Wigan factor out of the equation and compare them like for like

Read my post again. I am saying Edwards was better in different ways other than being flash. In the same way that Thurston is better than Marshall without the flash. I didn't realise opening up the defence and individual brilliance was the only way in which you can be 'better' than another player.

Yes, I get that. Maybe I should have just quoted the bit about the ‘if you want to win pick Edwards’ as the team element of our sport make that argument impossible to defend

As for the flash vs. Individual brilliance. I think it is a little bit of a false argument because Schofield was certainly capable of bossing a game (definitely later in his career at 6) but if we need to categorise them as such then I think that Schofield was a better flashy player than Edwards was a solid player

If I was selecting a team from that era, Schofield would be one of the first on the team sheet

Love this quote from Schofield “My best performances that year came in the Test series in New Zealand(1990) and I loved it when Phil Clarke told me that Shaun Edwards’s dad put pictures of me wearing the Great Britain number-six jersey up in his kitchen to motivate him into getting the jersey back. But from then on, Shaun wasn’t getting that jersey back, it was mine.''