He was let down in a few ways, for a long time during his career the clubs conditioning wasn’t the best and certainly didn’t cater for a finely tuned athlete which may have left him vulnerable to the injuries he suffered. Overusing him as a battering ram was another way we abused his athleticism, yes he’s good at it and most clubs use their wingers for this but we relied on his ability to make metres at least as much as his try scoring. We didn’t put defensive players around him, he was lambasted by his own fans and derided by opposing fans as a poor defender which he isn’t, he was just exposed by poor defenders and defensive systems inside him. That reputation possibly cost Tom a representative call!
The most crucial IMO was that once we knew what we had we should have moved heaven and earth to get a centre who could set him up to score the scintillating try’s we know he’s capable of. Take Offiah at Wigan for example, Wigan went out and bought Gene Miles for the specific reason of getting good ball to Offiah and the results were off the scale. We never did that with Tom and while I know money was an issue we had enough seasons to get someone who could pass to play inside him.
It’s great to see him scoring try’s for fun and getting a Man of Steel nomination, I hope he has a superb play off campaign and wins the lot
