Player of the Season 2014/15
By Griff
July 3 2015
We've been remiss with our end-of-season admin, there's the small matter of who was The Craic's player of the season. As usual this is awarded to the player that has won the most Man of the Match polls on the site. Let's see who it is...
First of all we'll acknowledge (and quietly discard) the one None of the Above awarded - Sale away was a bad day and no-one wants to go there again. More happily we can discard the London Double Header award which went to the front-row of Tom Court, David Paice and Halani Aulika aided by Gerard Ellis, Matt Parr and Leo Halavatau. Given the handling they got at the hands of referees for the rest of the season (Halani especially) it seems unsurprising that not a one of them received an individual award after this.
The guys who managed a single award were: Conor Gilsenan, James Short, Jebb Sinclair, Harry Allen, Fergus Mulcrone, Tom Fowlie, Chris Noakes and Tom Guest winning them recognition in a closely fought battle but no place in the sun.
In the middle of the table are those bagging a brace of awards. Stand-up Blair Cowan, Andrew Fenby, Richard Palframan and Scott Steele. Two awards shows a consistency of effort and should be applauded - but for a few votes each week these guys could easily have made the top spot.
In joint third place with three awards each are guys at opposite ends of the rugby spectrum. Alex Lewington was all fireworks and showed that we haven't lost our attacking edge completely, earning himself deserved interest from the England set-up. Ofisa Treviranus has been massive in the engine-room, at times seemingly picking-up the entire team and moving them forward. Ofisa has been awarded the Samoan captaincy for the Rugby World Cup, top work sir.
In a very close second with four awards is one of our departees, Myles Dorian. Coming on in the Anglo-Welsh games and subsequently earning first-team places Myles played superbly at fly-half feeding the newly discovered attacking-edge well and making his own breaks. We'll miss you Mr Dorian.
The winner, however, joins Seilala Mapusua as our second two-time winner of Player of the Season. With five Man of the Match awards Shane Geraghty, winner back in 2006/7, takes the prize*. I hoped Shane's return would see him return to the form of 2006/7 when he was knocking on the door of (and occasionally getting into) the England team. I think he'd be the first to admit he's not quite got back to that form but he certainly gave the Irish team a lot more zip than we've seen for a little while. I suspect he'll be working more in the centre than at fly-half in the future, simply because of the available talent in the new signings, but he'll certainly be a feature in the London Irish side in the coming weeks and months and, in all likelihood, taking further MotM awards. Could he be our first hat trick?
* There is no actual "prize".
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A true class act.
RT