Player of the Season

Shaun Perry
By Ian Todd
May 17 2006

You cast your votes in the Man of the Match polls. Now find out who was your Player of the Season! See which player had the greatest impact in a particular game.

Poll of Polls

The various man-of-the-match polls have been collated and I can now reveal the Unofficial Bristol Rugby Website Player of the season! There were a total of 1722 votes cast in 22 polls. The maximum number of votes per poll was 149 against Gloucester away, curiously the lowest number was 24 against Gloucester at home. I know it was a poor performance but surely not that bad? The average is 80 votes per poll. In the three polls I ran shortly after taking over the editing, when I arbitrarily decided to make a selection for people to vote for, we had an average of 92 votes (89, 90 and 97 if you really want to know). I might revert to this system next season if it gets more voters. The player who received the highest percentage of the total vote was Shaun Perry with 16.33% - this site’s Player of the Season. In the chart below you can see the top five players and Shaun is clearly out in front. The rest of the top five are all forwards which justly recognises the collective efforts of the Bristol pack. The highest placed back other than Shaun Perry was Lee Robinson on 4.65% in seventh.

I’ve also tried to look at the players who received the highest ratings in individual polls. This should indicate who supporters felt had particularly outstanding performances in specific games. The winner here is Dan Ward-Smith who, in the home match against Wasps, received over 52% of the votes cast. As you can see in the chart below he was very closely followed by Shaun Perry with a performance that merited 48%. In fact you can see how many times Shaun appears here which clearly shows that he was consistently rated highly throughout the season. Interestingly, you can also see how a player can have a dominant or significant performance in a particular game, for example Brian Lima, Sam Cox or Vaughan Going, and yet fail to garner enough votes over the entire season to make it into the top five. Whereas someone like Matt Salter was clearly able to pick up considerable votes throughout the season with consistent high levels of performance. Congratulations to all the players, and particularly to Shaun and Dan, and thank you to everyone who voted in the polls.

The various man-of-the-match polls have been collated and I can now reveal the Unofficial Bristol Rugby Website Player of the season!

There were a total of 1722 votes cast in 22 polls. The maximum number of votes per poll was 149 against Gloucester away, curiously the lowest number was 24 against Gloucester at home. I know it was a poor performance but surely not that bad? The average is 80 votes per poll. In the three polls I ran shortly after taking over the editing, when I arbitrarily decided to make a selection for people to vote for, we had an average of 92 votes (89, 90 and 97 if you really want to know). I might revert to this system next season if it gets more voters.

The player who received the highest percentage of the total vote was Shaun Perry with 16.33% - this site’s Player of the Season. In the chart below you can see the top five players and Shaun is clearly out in front. The rest of the top five are all forwards which justly recognises the collective efforts of the Bristol pack. The highest placed back other than Shaun Perry was Lee Robinson on 4.65% in seventh.

Top five players, Perry, Salter, Ward-Smith, Hilton, El Abd

I’ve also tried to look at the players who received the highest ratings in individual polls. This should indicate who supporters felt had particularly outstanding performances in specific games. The winner here is Dan Ward-Smith who, in the home match against Wasps, received over 52% of the votes cast. As you can see in the chart below he was very closely followed by Shaun Perry with a performance that merited 48%. In fact you can see how many times Shaun appears here which clearly shows that he was consistently rated highly throughout the season. Interestingly, you can also see how a player can have a dominant or significant performance in a particular game, for example Brian Lima, Sam Cox or Vaughan Going, and yet fail to garner enough votes over the entire season to make it into the top five. Whereas someone like Matt Salter was clearly able to pick up considerable votes throughout the season with consistent high levels of performance.

Congratulations to all the players, and particularly to Shaun and Dan, and thank you to everyone who voted in the polls.