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ROCHDALE – It’s hard to believe there’s just one game of the men’s tournament to go. You get into a rhythm of multiple games per day, and just when that’s about to end, the women’s and wheelchair tournaments start. It’ll be nice to get back to Australia and sleep (LOL, jk, FIFA World Cup time).
It’s been hard to take stock of everything that has been going on, and even for me, a guy who watches probably more rugby league games than anyone else you know – I stopped counting at 100 this year, and that was in person – it’s hard to concentrate on who was good when.
It’s doubly difficult because in World Cups, individual performances are generally taken in context. Can an Italian be the best player on the field against Australia? Probably not, but if you make multiple good efforts in losing causes, is that enough for this list?
Conversely, if you’re in a highly dominant team, how hard is it to look good? Dom Young looked superb when England looked superb but buckled when they buckled. Is that better than Siteni Taukamo, the Greek winger who got extremely limited attacking opportunities, but took them?
Inevitably, then, this side more a list of the players I have enjoyed the most than the actual best players. For what it’s worth, Australians are hard to pick because the rotation policy has made it hard for any single player to emerge as dominant in one area, especially in the forwards, where there has been much chopping and changing.
I’ve picked everyone in the position they most frequently appeared with no preference between start and interchange. It’s a 17-player game nowadays, dontcha know.
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For the record: I am part of the panel that has been deciding the Team of the Tournament on a week-by-week basis in both men’s and women’s World Cups, as well as a voter for the Golden Boot.
This is my personal team for the men’s comp and not the official team that represents the plurality of voters across the panel. That’s due for release later in the week and will doubtless be more sensible.
The Men’s Golden Boot panel has decided on a long list, which now goes to a different panel – James Graham, Cameron Smith and Ruben Wiki, no less – who pick the actual winner. There’s a ceremony in Manchester on Tuesday afternoon (UK time) and I will keep you posted.
It’s hard to argue against Manu, who was also my vote for the Golden Boot. The only downside on his performance is that we have to go back to watching him play in the centres next year, when fullback is evidently the position that allows him to do his best work.
The speed across the ground and enthusiasm for hard carries are extra elements that you get in Manu, fullback edition, that complement the upper body strength and magic moments that we see in the centres. To me, there’s no question who the best player in international footy has been this year – remember, the midseason Test counts too – and it’s Manu by a distance.
My second place for the Golden Boot is Josh Addo-Carr, who has transcended this tournament. I’ve written before that he’s the hero that casual fans needed, a photogenic, likeable, spectacular player who scores a hatful of tries. He spoke to me after the Kangaroos’ first game and expressed surprise that UK fans were booing him when he was stood out on the wing, but then cheered him to the rafters when he scored that astounding first try against Fiji.
The local crowd are knowledgeable, I replied. If you wear the Green and Gold, they’re predisposed to hate you, but if you do something great, you’ll get all the recognition in the world. The Foxx thought it was hilarious, though he seems to think most things are.
The more Addo-Carr plays at this World Cup, the more baffling it is that Brad Fittler left him out of Origin. He’s not stopped being good. Even when the Bulldogs were at their worst, he tended to be among their best. Now, everyone gets to see what happens when the Foxx is scorned. We’re all winning, but he’s winning more.
If the Foxx is a redemption arc, how about Tim Lafai? Bombed out from Canterbury in 2020, he was playing for Windsor Wolves and working as a labourer when Salford came calling and offered him a Super League gig. He ended up making the 2022 Dream Team and, when Izack Tago got hurt, playing for his nation at the World Cup.
From the second he joined the camp, Lafai has been among the Samoans’ best. Maybe it’s been his age and demeanour, the fact that it was so lucky that he is there in the first place, or just his skill as a footy player, but he has added something to the squad that has elevated Samoa into the World Cup Final.
Lafai was close to the best on ground in the semi and good enough that his clubmate Kallum Watkins had to be hooked. Everything good happened along his edge. Jarome Luai has grown a leg with such a dependable guy outside of him, too, with the centre enabling the five eighth to flourish. Unquestionably, he’s been the best centre at this World Cup.
(Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)
The second centre spot is one of the hardest to pick, because there hasn’t been a standout: Stephen Crichton was great on the weekend, but quiet early on; Latrell Mitchell was excellent previously, but yet to shine in the knockouts and Kallum Watkins was superb early on but ended up getting hooked when it mattered. There’s honourable mentions for Ed Chamberlain, among Ireland’s best, and Justin Olam, always PNG’s star.
Instead, I’m going for Herbie Farnworth. He was argaubly better than Crichton on Saturday in London, despite ending up on the losing side, and has been consistently threatening throughout.
Factor in that he hasn’t played since midseason in the NRL with a bicep injury – and never before at international level – and it makes it all the more impressive that he slotted into the side and made that position his own.
There’s nothing more to say about Brian To’o. It’s hard to compare him and Addo-Carr, the best two wingers at the World Cup, because they’re fundamentally trying to do different things, so let’s leave it at this: any team would be lucky to have both of them available. (Sorry, Brad.)
Where the Foxx is about moments, Bizza is all, er, business. He’s the model of consistency and a winger who makes other teams adapt to how he wants to play the game. You build an entire kicking strategy around where you want To’o to get the ball to do the least with it.
At this tournament, he was great even when Samoa were rubbish and when they were good, he was still among their best. I gave him man of the match against France and Tonga, the two games when nobody was sure if they would ever get it together, such was the way he lead from the front.
He’s the man you love to hate, and he knows it. For the record, I don’t hate Jarome Luai, quite the opposite, but I have often considered him something of a luxury player. Within the Panthers system he’s perfect, but at Origin level, I’m not sure he’d be the best Blues option available.
At international level, however, he has answered every question. The first week was dreadful and showed up his less-than-brilliant long kicking, but in every other aspect of the game, Luai has only grown. There’s not really any doubt about attacking creativity and running skills, but the organisational and leadership roles that he has to fulfil for Toa Samoa are tasks not on his list at Penrith. He stood up, and then some.
George Williams’ redemption story is right up there with Josh Addo-Carr. After leaving Canberra during Covid, he went back to the Super League: not to his boyhood club, Wigan, but instead to the higher-paying Warrington, who have subsequently been terrible.
They finished 10th of 12 and, depending on who you ask, Williams was either as rubbish as the rest of them or their one shining light. Either way, it took an injury to Jonny Lomax, the best half in Super League, to make sure a starting spot for Williams.
There can be no critics now. Williams was backed to the hilt by Shaun Wane, always his biggest fan, and responded with some of the best performances from any half, which I use deliberately as he featured at both 6 and 7 at points.
My main issue with his play has always been an over-willingness to kick, and that was still to the fore against Samoa, but you can’t argue with results: Williams is probably the best attacking kicker in rugby league and continually produced points and opportunities with his boot.
He also created with his running and offloading, while his defence has never been in question. I hope his homesickness ends and someone gives him another gig in the NRL. Were I, say, the Football Manager of the Canterbury Bulldogs, I would be throwing cash at George Williams.
(Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
There’ll come a point where we stop referring to Tom Burgess in the context of his brothers and appreciate him as one of the best props in the game on his own terms. He’s that good now. Any of the teams at the World Cup would have him in their 17, including the Kangaroos and Kiwis.
The first 20 minutes he put in against PNG was about the best starting stint from a prop that I’ve ever seen. His return to the field for the end of the semi with Samoa nearly swung the game his side’s way.
Burgess is quite a unique kind of prop because he runs hard, with leg drive, but is also massive and hits chest first with a high centre of gravity, which makes him hard to jar back and predisposed to find his front and get the quick play the ball. He runs, for want of a better phrase, without ego: he exists to get tackled and quickly. That’s a good thing.
The Edwin Ipape sample size was four games, but I’m only including three because all the inside mail was that, in the game against England, he was injured from the start and never should been on the field.
In the three group games, Ipape was man of the match three times in my eyes. He’s had a strange old route to the top: Ipape came down from PNG to play for the Hunters, but didn’t make the grade after repeated struggles to adapt to the professional lifestyle. Eventually, he got a contract at Leigh in the English second tier, from which he has never looked back.
His style is eye-catching and perfect to play off the back of forwards that run hard, so it was no surprise that he worked perfectly in the Kumuls system. More surprising was the way that he was able to do it while playing against Tonga, a formidable pack themselves, and still be the best player on the field.
As is often the case for guys who drop out of elite pathways for non-playing reasons, the talent has never been in question. If Ipape has added the other stuff, expect to see him in a team better than Leigh very soon.
Really, any of the Kiwi pack could have got a gig here, but given that James Fisher-Harris was the pack leader and Joseph Tapine predominantly played as a lock – well, an extra prop, really, but sort of a lock – I’m going to stick the Fish in.
He underlined his credentials as the best prop in the world (‘never mind anybody else!‘) with several punishing displays in the middle and, crucially, contributions when his side were less than convincing.
When the black and white wall got rolling, Fisher-Harris was generally the one who started the momentum and he’s ended up with the fifth most tackles of anyone in the tournament, despite playing prop forward minutes. Some effort.
(Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)
I’ve stuck Keoan in at second row, his more regular position, though it seems inappropriate to do so given that he only played a small fraction of his best stuff there.
Koloamatangi was the Tongan Army Knife (if that metaphor works), beginning as hooker in their first game, featuring at lock and in his traditional back-row role in others and ending as a five eighth due to injury as his side slid out of the tournament in the quarter final.
Wherever he played, he was a source of inspiration in a side that sometimes needed it. The Tongans never lacked impetus, but were not always at their flowing best, with Koloamatangi the most creative player at times. His ball-running has never been questioned but for Mate Ma’a Tonga, he was asked to show skills he rarely displays at Souths. It was a shame to see him on the losing side.
Describing Liam Martin as a bolter is a bit counterintuitive given that he’s won two Premierships and made every rep team for the last few years, but he still is an outsider in this Kangaroos team.
They had a bit of everything in their pack, but somehow the Panthers back-rower added something new and needed: a bit of dog. He’s the final piece in the puzzle, a hard-running, bulk-tackling angry machine who has elevated the team yet higher.
Jeremiah Nanai got two man of the match awards but left out of the team when push came to shove. It’s easy to see why now we’ve all seen Liam Martin play.
I think the majority of teams will have Victor Radley in this role, and all power to them, because he was great. But for me, Isaah Yeo has been the best lock at the tournament, a point only underlined by his performance on Friday night (UK time) in Leeds.
It’s not the ball-playing aspects, though there are plenty of them, but the diligence and carries that go with being a traditional lock. Radley throws in a lot of eye-catching shots, and certainly made England a better side, but Yeo does the volume work in defence.
You get to do the flashy stuff only if you do the hard stuff first, and Yeo is the master of that. The ball-playing is just an added bonus.
Harry Grant leads the bench because he’s made an art form of interchange play in this tournament. The Aussie strategy has been to use Ben Hunt in the softening up periods and then unleash Grant on tired defensive lines, a tactic that has worked perfectly so far.
Grant is eye-catchingly fast from dummy half, but the speed between the ears is even better and has given Australia and extra dimension towards the end of halves when mental fatigue is setting in.
(Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images for RLWC)
Murray had to be in the team somewhere and the bench rotation is about the best place for him, as that has been his starting position of late. He’s the ultimate culture guy, not a shouter but a shower, and that’s what the team needed.
His versatility has allowed Mal Meninga to use him at lock, second-row and in the middle and in all capacities, Murray has found a way to shine. In earlier games as a 13, he was the ball-player. When he was on an edge, he transitioned to a hard-tackling line-runner. Off the bench, he is a quick play the ball in the middle against tired defenders.
France didn’t have the best tournament, though they were a little hard done by in the draw and then on the day against Samoa. But their best player in all three games was Ben Garcia, the Catalans lock.
When his side were favourites against Greece, Garcia ran the show, topping the metres and the tackles. Then he did it again on the end of a flogging at the hands of Samoa. In their middle game against England, France put in their best performance and Garcia was their best player.
Individual awards go to individuals, and Garcia was his side’s man of the match in all three of their games, so he gets into my side.
This is the tournament that showed how good Tito Turuva can be. When Fiji were good, it was mostly on the back of Turuva’s work, both in terms of metres in yardage and classy touches in good ball.
The quarter-final defeat to New Zealand saw him put in one of the great losing efforts, and he was their best player against Australia in the first game too. Throw in two actual man of the match efforts in wins over Italy and Scotland and you’ve got a bloody strong tournament.
He goes back to NSW Cup and Penrith now, unfortunately, because Dylan Edwards is unshakeable at one. I hope someone gives him a loan move to play more footy in first grade in 2023.
Seen as the World Cup squads were 24 players, I’ll top up my list with another six honourable mentions.
Khaled Rajab, the Bulldogs and Lebanon playmaker, was a real breakout star (insert that painting nails gif, for anyone who read my preview) and I hope he gets some first grade next year. Josh Wong of Fiji cannot be far off the same, such was his strength at this World Cup.
Kyle Laybutt deserves another go, probably in Super League, because he was brilliant for PNG. Jack Welsby was poor in the semi-final, but will come again and deserves a mention for all the other brilliant moments. Ireland’s Louis Senior was a towering figure on the wing and scored twice in every game he played.
Last but certainly not least: Theodoros Nianiakas played all three games for Greece, the most by any amateur player, including over an hour in the pack against England and 54 minutes against Samoa. He is, I repeat, an amateur.