Welcome to my NRL team of the year where I take a look back at the season and select the best player in every position.

Some quick notes on how I assembled the team. Firstly, position matters, including side of the field. So I’ve picked backs and second rowers according to what side of the field they specialise on.

For instance there were probably two or three second rowers who had a better year overall than Tyson Frizell but they are all left side specialists. Similarly one could argue that Blake Ferguson was better than Michael Jennings but he wasn’t better than fellow right-sider James Roberts.

Secondly durability matters, so you have to play 18 games at your position to qualify. If you aren’t there for three quarters of the season then I can’t put you in a team of the year.

Thirdly this is a club football team of the year, so representative performances don’t count.

Finally to avoid any confusion let me be clear that choosing one player over another does not mean I think the second player is garbage. Some of these decisions are incredibly close and reflect the sorts of things I value in a player. There is room for reasonable people to disagree.

Three positions presented a particular challenge this year: fullback, five-eighth and hooker.

At fullback two players, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and James Tedesco stood head and shoulders above the others.
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At five-eighth there were four players in the top tier with Anthony Milford James Maloney, Michael Morgan and Blake Austin all making a compelling case.

But it was at hooker where we saw the closest contest with any of Michael Ennis, Jake Granville, Josh Hodgson, Mitch Rein or Cameron Smith able make a strong claim while Michael Lichaa and Andrew McCulloch were also both outstanding.

With that in mind on to the team.

Fullback – Roger Tuivasa-Sheck
Wow. Just wow.

What a year for Roger-Tuivasa-Sheck. It wasn’t quite the 2009 Hayne Plane but it was the best season we’ve seen from a fullback since then, including Hayne’s own remix last year.

Much like Hayne in 2009 Tuivasa-Sheck is now beating people without even really doing anything except dancing on the spot.

He’s like a mashup of the cartoon Tassie Devil and Neo at the end of the first Matrix movie, in constant motion himself but seeing everything and everyone else in slo-mo. You start to believe that he might actually have direct access to the source code and be able to sidestep a bullet at this point.

It is a measure of how spectacular ‘Sheck was this season that James Tedesco actually had the better season statistically and yet Tuivasa-Sheck is still clearly number one.

Some of Tedesco’s statistical accumulation is down to circumstance as he capitalised on the second year swoon from young halves Luke Brooks and Mitch Moses to emerge as the Tigers’ primary attacking weapon. That is not to downplay his success, Tedesco was undoubtedly brilliant but one can argue that in a stronger team he may not have hoovered up quite so many stats.

Perhaps the most surprising category in which Tedesco was ahead of Tuivasa-Sheck was tackle breaks. Again Tedesco earned the statistical victory but the term tackle break is laughably inadequate for what Tuivasa-Sheck does with his spectacular running. Tedesco may break tackles, but Tuivasa-Sheck makes them vanish with nary a meep meep.

Right winger – Valentine Holmes
Speaking of Tuivasa-Sheck, this season from Valentine Holmes felt very much like the year Tuivasa-Sheck had in 2014 when he was the most over-qualified right winger in the competition.

With Anthony Minichello due to retire at season’s end, the Roosters used 2014 as a development year for Tuivasa-Sheck, allowing him to play on the wing in defence while moving into the fullback spot in the opposition half. The Sharks have not been quite as forthright in moving aside Michael Gordon in favour of Holmes this season, yet the latter has still had a profound effect for the invigorated Cronulla team.

Importantly with Gordon departing for the Eels at the end of the season Holmes has shown all the attributes he will need to follow Tuivasa-Sheck from wing to fullback. Holmes almost certainly won’t reach the level Tuivasa-Sheck reached in 2015 but he’s short odds to be the revelation of the season when he takes over the fullback role full time in 2016.

Right centre – James Roberts
One of only three players to make the team from a side outside the finals, Roberts makes it for very similar reasons to left winger Semi Radradra: sheer attacking brilliance. Roberts’ attacking numbers are out of this world. He led all centres in tries, line breaks and tackle breaks (by a huge margin) and at times ‘give it to Roberts’ was essentially the entire game plan for the Titans.

Roberts was also defensively solid with one of the lowest missed tackle rates among centres despite a revolving cast both inside and outside him in the defensive line.

Left centre – Michael Jennings
Jennings has now reached the level where he is so good, so professionally perfect week in, week out that you rarely even notice him. Jennings is no longer the electric playmaker he was in the early part of his career and his days of scoring 15+ tries in a season are probably done. Instead now Jennings has become a distributor with seven try assists and eight line break assists to go with his seven tries in 2015.

Leftwinger – Semi Radradra
Curtis Rona is no doubt a little unlucky not to be selected here but in the end Radradra gets the nod for having a slightly broader game than Rona, recording more line breaks, line break assists and try assists. Indeed Radradra led all wingers in all of those categories plus offloads and tackle breaks to boot.

A key facet of Radradra’s game in 2015 was the volume of work he got through, recording nearly 16 carries per game for 160m per game. Radradra was extremely effective coming in from his usual spot on the wing to run back at the defence from the centre spot, creating opportunities for a wrapping fullback or his nominal centre.

Five-eighth – Anthony Milford
It seems a long time ago but in the first five or six games of the year it seemed clear that the old man in the coaching booth had finally lost it by insisting on playing Milford at five-eighth. It was clear to everyone that Milford was a fullback through and through.

I’m happy to admit that I was among the doubters and as such completely wrong.

While Milford may have struggled through the first third of the season he has been truly outstanding since. It is not simply that he has found a way to translate his elite running game from fullback to the halves but he has also ticked all the playmaking boxes as well.

Milford was second among five-eighths for try assists and first for line break assists. He also had more offloads than every other five-eighth except Blake Austin and Jack Bird.

Oh and that running game – that was pretty handy. Milford ran the ball over 10 times a game to average a tick under 100m, while breaking nearly four tackles a game. He also crossed for 11 tries to trail only the Techno-Viking Blake Austin among halves.

The one knock on Milford as a half is his lacklustre kicking game and it is fair to say that it is a work in progress. For the time being Ben Hunt has been able to take on all the kicking responsibility for the Broncos but Milford will need to improve this facet if he is to become a truly complete half.

Halfback – Johnathan Thurston
Absolutely. No. Contest.

Helped no doubt by having effective complementary playmakers at both five-eighth (Michael Morgan) and fullback (the resurgent Lachlan Coote) to keep the opposition honest, Thurston was dominant in 2015. He led the league in both try assists (22) and line break assists (18) and kicked superbly. He also recorded relatively few errors (28) for a player who touches the ball as many as 80 times per game.

Thurston is undoubtedly the halfback of his generation and this year was one of his finest and will no doubt be capped by a Dally M medal at the end of the season.

Front row forwards – Jesse Bromwich and Ben Matulino
In the front row there were four strong candidates for two spots in the team with Bromwich and Matulino prevailing over fellow Kiwi Jared Warea-Hargreaves along with Aaron Woods. It is worth noting that on raw statistics Andrew Fifita might also have been in the conversation however he misses out via my entirely arbitrary cut off for games played, having made only 16 appearances for the Sharks this year.

Regular readers and those who follow me on Twitter will be well aware of the high esteem in which I hold Warea-Hargreaves and indeed there is no more dominant a force in the competition when he is on song. But this award is for the best season-long performance and Warea-Hargreaves is still too inconsistent. For each game that he won with his devastating power running, there was another in which he was lacklustre at best.

He failed to make over 100m on eight occasions and while simple metres carried isn’t the be all and end all it is a good indicator of a subdued performance.

For Aaron Woods too the concern was his consistency over the course of the season. In the eight games before representative season began Woods averaged 171m on nearly 19 carries per game. For the rest of the season he averaged 132m per game on a little over 14 carries per game. The good news is that as a relatively young prop Woods will only get better at carrying his form through an entire season much like Bromwich and Matulino.

Of course simple consistency isn’t everything, you could put me on an NRL field every week and I’d definitely deliver a consistent performance. Well actually, I probably wouldn’t last past the first tackle or hit up. But you know what I mean.

But Bromwich and Matulino weren’t simply consistent they were both consistently good. Both played big minutes and got through boatloads of work in both attack and defence, while all the while contributing to their team’s playmaking through offloads and tackle breaks.

Hooker – Michael Ennis
What an amazing year this was for dummy halves. Whether it was Jake Granville blitzing tiring defences with his exhilarating pace or Canberra’s Josh Hodgson kicking 40/20s and delivering crisp short passes at the line, dummy half play was outstanding this season. Meanwhile, less gaudy players like Andrew McCulloch and Michael Lichaa were the foundations upon which their more celebrated teammates built their games and the veteran Cameron Smith just kept on delivering week in week out.

But it the end it was a player who for many was an afterthought player on an afterthought team who gets the nod. When Michael Ennis joined the Sharks it was seen by many as a smart move to pick up some veteran leadership but overall poor compensation for the loss of junior rep standout Lichaa. But 12 months later and Michael Ennis is perhaps the most important player on a team that went from the cellar to within a hair of making the top four.

For all the talk of the leadership intangibles that Ennis delivers his actual on-field contribution has been fantastic. He is the top ranked dummy half for both try assists and line break assists and has taken on large part of the kicking duties for Cronulla, easing the pressure on Jack Bird, a talented player who is far more suited to a running role than a traditional half role.

In my 2014 season review of the Sharks I predicted they would finish in the bottom four (can’t get ‘em all right) but in large part that prediction was based on what I saw as a critical lack of creativity in their halves. For the record I wasn’t alone in doubting the Sharks with only two of Fairfax’s ten rugby league experts predicting the Sharks would make the top eight.

The all-around game of Michael Ennis, along with the emergence of Wade Graham, was a huge reason why the team was able to outperform those expectations to finish fifth.

Right second row – Tyson Frizell
Unlike on the left edge where there were a number of outstanding contenders the right side backrowers collectively did not have as good a season. Josh Jackson was solid but was probably better in 2014. Bryce Cartwright looked devastating at times as backrower but he spent so much time as a Mr Fixit across the park for coach Ivan Cleary that he doesn’t meet the eligibility test.

Right side stalwarts like Josh Papalii, Kevin Proctor and Luke Lewis were all solid to good but none had the sort of season to put them over the top.

Instead the award goes to perhaps the signature success story of Coach ‘Mary’ Macgregor’s tenure at the Dragons, Tyson Frizell. After several seasons bouncing between prop, lock, bench and backrow Macgregor firmly installed Frizell on the right edge in 2015 and let him run riot. The result was form that saw him universally acknowledged as unlucky to miss State of Origin selection as he was instrumental in the Dragons ascent to the top of the table in the early going.

Left second row – Wade Graham
In the NBA they have an annual award for the most improved player and if we were to adopt that practice in the NRL there would be few better candidates than Wade Graham. That is not to say that Graham has been poor in the past. Indeed Graham has been a solid player for the Sharks since joining the club in 2011. However in 2015 Graham has set a new standard for himself.

After coming across from the Panthers as a wannabe five-eighth, a position for which he possessed the requisite talent if not the requisite temperament, Graham was rebadged as a hard running backrower by coach Shane Flanagan. Graham steadily matured over 2013 and 2014 to the point where he seemed content in his new role.

This season however he finally found the balance between his powerful ball running and his latent playmaking skills in carving out a crucial role on the left edge for the Sharks.

A key part of this was his excellent kicking game. No second rower even comes close to kicking the ball as frequently as Graham. Indeed Grahams 58 kicks in play has more in common with most team’s five-eighth than with the next most frequent kicker among second rowers which was John Sutton with 15 kicks for the season.

Graham’s playmaking vision and his kicking ability is a crucial weapon for the Sharks as it allows them to have an each way bet on running the ball on the last tackle. The team can spin it wide toward Graham confident that he can read the defence and either continue the running play if the opportunity is there or put in an effective kick if it is not.

Lock – Corey Parker
There are many clichés about certain things getting better with age but if ever it was appropriate to roll one of those clichés out to describe a football player then Corey Parker is it.

It is hard to believe now but for a long stretch in his career, indeed the bulk of it, Parker was not an Origin player. After playing four games in 2004 and 2005 Parker then fell out of Queensland consideration and didn’t return to the side until 2011. He has since played 13 of 15 Origin games and has only become more and more critical for both Queensland and the Broncos.

At club level Parker does it all, contributing in both attack and defence and while he doesn’t top the charts in any particular category (except of course goals kicked) he has a crucial role as a mid-field general for a team with two young halves and a young dummy half.