We now enter the awards season.
Individual awards in the ultimate team game are always liable to cause controversy.
My views can be no less subjective than anyone else’s, but here they are:
1. World Player of the Year – Sophie de Goede
Quite correct! She tends to be the outstanding player of every game she appears in. She has an astonishing range of skills, including captaincy. Even when Kevin Rouet kept Alex Tessier as captain after SdG’s year-long absence, you could see her leadership shining through.
2. Breakthrough Player of the Year – Braxton Sorensen-McGee
Correct again, though Jorja Miller must have run her close.
Once upon a time a 36-year-old might gave won this pot, but here a girl half her age took the world by storm. Quite apart from her eleven tournament tries, Allan Bunting was happy to move her from 15 to 14, where she performed with even greater success.
3. Coach of the Year – John Mitchell
Oh no! I cannot begin to agree with this verdict at all. Mitchell was chosen by the RFU to take over (belatedly) a highly successful organisation that had already achieved a record-breaking run of 30 wins. He merely added to them. His mantra was: “play faster!”
Yet critics still moaned about England’s reliance on pack dominance. (I didn’t).
Note that in the final the backs totalled one try, that marvel by Ellie Kildunne.
The award should have been given to Kevin Rouet who achieved minor miracles in building such a magnificent Canadian squad against a lack of funding and facilities. It would have recognised the players’ advance too.
4. Referee of the Year – Hollie Davidson
Another thoroughly deserved award. Davidson was given the signal honour of officiating her second final running.
This in turn served as a rebuke to the many who had condemned her Eden Park performance. The people who matter thought otherwise.
The huge success of the Twickenham final owed much to her unobtrusive presence.
5. Team of the Tournament
First the choice:
15 KILDUNNE (E) 14 MILLER (A) 13 JONES (E) 12 NGWEVU (SA) 11 SORENSEN-McGEE (NZ) 10 HARRISON (E) 9 BOURDON-SANSUS (F) 1 CLIFFORD (E) 2 COKAYNE (E) 3 DJOUGANG (Ire) 4 DE GOEDE (C) 5 WARD (E) 6 KABEYA (E) 7 MILLER (NZ) 8 MATTHEWS (E)
Congratulations to all the 15 selected.
Do you feel your own nation has been fairly treated? Almost certainly not.
Seven English players may possibly be justified – they won the trophy. But only one Canadian? And she happens to be the WPotY!
As an Englishman I find Kelsey Clifford’s selection hard to credit. Even the official tribute to her makes clear the England selectors were only too happy to revert to Hannah Botterman, once she recovered from injury.
A reminder: we are discussing here the best of the best. I have not forgotten Kelsey’s great contribution, including five tries.
You can pick your other quibbles: Karen Paquin for Sadia Kabeya? – and so on. But we weren’t invited on to the deciding panel.
Let’s say, the playing standards are so high these days that the choices will continue growing more difficult and divisive.
