morell wrote:At least someone gets it. Thanks Zartan.
I've been invited a few times and have never been. It's a naff award voted by to be honest, mostly naff people, especially in the lower divs. I wouldn't trust umpires in the lower divs to pick me an ice cream flavour, let alone contribute to what should be a prestigious award. Most of the people at Mitchell Park I speak to feel very similar. Most years people don't even know what it is!! Its the same reason why people aren't keen on going to the Power/Freo game now. As soon as you take the legitimacy out of the competition, people lose interest.
Coaches in general, perhaps except for a few notable exceptions... are good, knowledgeable and fair football people and are in a much better position to adjudicate the best and fairest player in their respective competition.
Jeez. I
know this, and if I hadn't known it I certainly would today after reading everything... but for whatever reason, it has only just sunk in that the motley crew in white whom I've been heaping crap on all year... are the ones responsible for handing out the votes.
HOLY F***ING BLIMEY O'REILLY'S TROUSERS.
These are the same blokes who allow people to handball out of the goalsquare, who yellow-card a player for swearing (not at the umpire, just swearing in general), whose idea of a 25m penalty is anywhere from the length of a paddling pool to the length of the entire oval. Some of them take that long between blowing the whistle and getting to where the ball is that they should call time off. I understand that in div 7 you take what you can get, and these guys are giving up their time to umpire our game, and I respect that. But there were times this year when they struggled to keep control of the game; I'm not convinced a lot of them even know one player from another, and I think having these blokes responsible for who wins the medal is pretty farcical, to be honest.
Let the coaches of each side pick their 5 best and be done with it. If that seems too biased, have a third person pick THEIR 5 best - one of the field umpires would be easiest. That way the umpires still get a say, but they're not in charge of the whole thing. You'd have two coaches and an umpire, three lots of 5 votes - that shouldn't be too hard to work with.