Westwood has to be the stand out player in super league so far for man of steel ! Roby looking good but even I would look good in that saints team ! See how Tompkins goes when they play the better teams ! Think Leeds were concentrating on the WCC when they played the pies !
Benny for MOS
Wire win the treble
Catalans finish second in SL

According to Phil Clarke on Boots n all this week you are wrong.

His stats say that Tomkins is the stand out player in SL so far.

Call me an old cynic if you like but surely its no coincidence that 'Mr Wigans' stats have picked out a Wigan player as the stand out player. I may add that Phil's stats do seem to favour the backs (full backs especially) and would never allow for an equal comparison between backs and forwards. But dont let that get in the way of a good Wigan story.

To me this my Dad is harder than your Dad is a bit daft.
To say someone is the best in any area of Sport is purely and wholly subjective.

I think that Super Ben is a fantastic player and I am very very pleased that he plays for us.

Westwood is a superior attacker and defender to Ellis. Both great players though. Westwood has pace, ball-playing ability and the ability to make 40 tackles. Ellis is a rock-solid defender and ball-carrier, but he lacks the mongrel of Westwood.

Anyone who thinks the 'T-Rex' is better than either has spent too much time listening to Phil Gould and the Aussie-worshipping brigade. Thaiday and Gallon are certainly superb players.

Gallen is the numero uno in the world for me

Is Ben Westwood still the most underrated player in Super league (Like he was 2 seasons ago)

To be fair I always thought at the time in 1981 that calling a teenage second-row playing for Oldham in the old second division the Worlds(sic) best RL forward was stretching it a bit.

Westwood player of the month in Rugby League World.

Harrisson Hansen..

no..best 2nd rower over here by a country mile,,always gives 100%.you only have to look at him when he gets subbed,poor lad looks knackered...and what a really nice guy to talk too as well...candidate for man of steel(thats if roby dont get it for having 2 decent games)

To be fair, he looks like that at the start of the game.

He jogged back onto the pitch against HKR in the second half like he was totally knackered, then set the place alight with one of the best 20 min spells I've ever seen anyone play... I think we should rest him mid-game more often if that's the result.

I wonder if we would have even signed Westwood, had Neil Turley accepted our offer in mid 2002. From my memory, this was the time when Steve Anderson left and Simon Moran (who wasn't the full owner back then but was on the board) put some money to be available to David Plange to strengthen the side, we went for Turley, Turley ummed and ahhed, then we pulled out and David Plange said we had "other irons in the fire". Pretty quickly we moved on to Westwood in a deal that also brought Nat Wood, and at the time Nat Wood was probably more significant in us surviving as Westwood's impact back then was not great.

Westwood had had a good year in 2001 under John Harbin in Wakey's great escape season when they had points deducted, but he'd started 2002 in less good form and the Wakefield fans told us that we had signed the wrong one, Ellis was the real prospect. David Plange said he was the next Keith Senior but from 2002-2004 he looked like he was a bit overrated, Wakey fans used to taunt us on our forum about him being "Ben Deadwood" the flop whereas Ellis went from strength to strength with them.

I thought when he was a centre/wing he always looked like a handful in contact but he just lacked speed and didn't have a step or swerve or anything to make him dangerous as an outside back, he was straight up and down and just a strong player that was hard to stop. He had a couple of good moments. The run in of 2003, when we made the playoffs for the first time, he had some good games on the wing, and in 2004 he got a hat-trick on the wing against Cas. But other than that he was never really consistent.

When we signed Gleeson, Fa'afili and Kohe-Love for 2005 I thought that was the writing on the wall for Westwood he would just be a back up player and then get moved on at the end of his contact, then Paul Noone I think it was who got injured and we used him as a forward and he looked great in the pack and never looked back.

As good as Westwood is,he needs to learn to pass.

Agreed - that pass round the man out of the tackle to Atkins last week was terrible.

I'd rather he didn't if his effort to J Monaghan at Huddersfield is anything to go by.

How far forward was that?



Imagine if he'd got pulled for it, as he could have fell over the line.

what do you think of him as a backrower sally?

how does he rate compared to the rest of world rugby league in your eyes?

I think it's harder to compare backrowers than it is say to compare fullbacks or standoffs. You can tell who the top ones are but it's harder to split hairs and rank the individuals in definitive order eg who's better out of Gallen, Thaiday, Ellis etc.

But to make a general view on Westwood's place in world rugby league, he's an England regular, if he was a New Zealander, he would be a Kiwi regular. If he was an Aussie, he would be around the State of Origin and Kangaroo squads, he would have had Origin and Test caps even if he wasn't first pick all the time.

Top 10 in the world definitely, top 5 not sure, possibly.

Westwood is world class. I wouldn't swap him for Ellis if I was given the chance.

One thing the Aussies would love about him is his work ethic and that little bit of mongrel.

is that the same Aussies that smashed him all over during the recent test match

Isn't playing tonight.

I respectfully suggest you adjust your set. Your current picture is providing you with a pile of .

I have always thought Harrison Hansen is an underrated player. I wouldn't swap him for Westwood though.