Glenn Gibbons: Masters of poor judgement

The week of the US Masters not only indicates to golfers in the northern hemisphere the imminence of a new season, but tends to coincide precisely with the first murmurings over the forthcoming conferrals of the major awards for footballing excellence.

The urge to make an early pitch for the big prizes – player and manager of the year – can spring from the need simply to fill a space in the paper, but, as often as not, the first names are proposed by those making a precipitate attempt to influence the outcome.

The Scottish Football Writers Association’s annual player of the year dinner has long been the most prestigious social event on the calendar, and its award the most prized. As with many other elections, strategic voting has often been a feature and this has led through the decades to some curious results.

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Indeed, at the risk of invoking the indignation of some of the brotherhood, it is fair to say that the SFWA has a pretty undistinguished record. This is the body, for example, which failed to honour Kenny Dalglish, despite NINE YEARS of unrivalled excellence at Celtic. More recently, they also contrived to bestow the title on Barry Ferguson twice, at a time when Henrik Larsson was still lacing up his boots.

The slightly embarrassing choices have been going on so long, too, that the finger cannot be pointed at a particular generation. As long ago as the inaugural event in 1965, Billy McNeill was nominated the laureate, basically for heading Celtic’s winning goal in the Scottish Cup final against Dunfermline.

At that precise moment, Kilmarnock were beating Hearts 2-0 at Tynecastle in an impossibly dramatic climax to the Scottish League championship. The winners and their hosts finished level on points, the Rugby Park side snatching the title on goal average.

There is no need now to dwell on individual names, but the recollection of that extraordinary season is sufficient to claim without fear of contradiction that Kilmarnock and Hearts each had several players more deserving of the accolade than the captain of a team that finished a distant eighth in the league and were brought to life only in the last few weeks of the campaign by the arrival of the subsequently incomparable Jock Stein.