Why this year's short-list means sweet PFA

While this year’s short-list for the prestigious PFA awards conveys just how quickly football can change, it identifies more than anything, a desperate need for an overhaul to the balloting system.

In an era of multi-millionaire footballers with access to up-to-the-minute technology, the PFA appears to be running this esteemed award’s system on logistical lines that wouldn’t look out of place in a Zimbabwe election. And it’s the timing that appears to be the salient problem.

The awards take place on April 27th, three weeks before the end of the season. As a result, the deadline for votes to be cast was 16TH March, two days after Liverpool’s demolition of Manchester United at Old Trafford, a contest that saw favourite for the award, Nemanja Vidic, traumatised by Fernando Torres throughout. But given the time-frame involved, it’s unlikely that any players would have factored this game, or indeed predicted United’s subsequent slump in form since.

However, by discarding the latter end and most important part of the season, it’s like telling the Booker Prize judges to hand back every book on the short-list when they're only halfway through.

This wouldn’t be so much of an issue when one player stands head and shoulders above the rest as Cristiano Ronaldo did last season. And in some respects perhaps it’s fitting that in a league of the Premiership’s stature that no one player on the short-list has outshone his peers.

But by asking players to vote at a time when Manchester Utd were looking invincible, breaking defensive records and crowned world champions, you have to be prepared to come out with egg on your face if things change. And unfortunately for the PFA, change has been imminent.

Under Hiddink Chelsea have re-established themselves as a force to be reckoned with – as have Arsenal – and United have begun to falter - if it wasn’t for Florent Macheda, Liverpool would be riding high at the top of the Premiership.
For the football writers, however, this is not a problem. Given that they have until the 11 May to cast their vote, they are able to wait and see if an outstanding candidate emerges.

At least by May the writers will know which club’s are successful. The PFA voters had to guess, and it looks like they all went with United.

Ryan Giggs is clearly a sentimental choice, favoured because of his long career as a model professional rather than his eleven starts and three goals in all competitions this season. And while Edwin van der Sar may have kept a record-breaking 14 consecutive clean-sheets in the league, he has conceded eleven goals in his last five games, and remains an average performer, reliant on an exceptional defence.

In front of him, Nermanja Vidic has been more eye-catching this season than Rio Ferdinand – who missed much of the record-breaking run through injury - but he has looked increasingly shaky in recent weeks. There can be no doubting however that the Serbian has been influential in maintaining United’s title challenge.

Cristiano Ronaldo will be the first to admit that he has not lived up to the dizzy heights of last season. If anything he has been damned by his own excellence, but while he remains the top scorer in the league, he is unlikely to become the first player to win the award in three consecutive seasons.

And that leaves us with Steven Gerrard – who for all his exceptional performances of late – will experience first-hand the ludicrous effects of the early ballot, given that his surge of form has come just after the players submitted their votes.

One significant thought raised by the short-list is whether professional footballers actually take a detailed note of the game that they play.

In a list well-populated by defenders, how might you ask, can any serious assessment of the season’s finest players not include Brede Hangeland, a player who has been at the heart of Fulham Football Club. And surely Mark Schwarzer’s contribution between the sticks has been more significant than that of Edwin Van Der Sar.

One stat that perhaps helps illustrate this point best is that at the time of writing, Edwin van der Sar has kept 18 premier league clean sheets and made 60 saves. Fulham's Mark Schwarzer on the other hand has comparatively only had 13 shut-outs, but has been forced into making a remarkable 123 saves.

Xabi Alonso, Steven Ireland and Phil Jagielka are all players who can feel unfortunate to miss out, but Frank Lampard’s omission from this year’s short-list is nothing short of preposterous.

No doubting he may be considered an unexciting choice, or so his fellow professionals appear to have decided, but he has been far more consistent than Ronaldo and during the final weeks of Scolari’s reign, Lampard carried Chelsea almost single-handedly through the chaos that seemed to be going on around them. Any professional who failed to notice that is daft.

And that leads us to another flaw in the system. For while perfectly respectable cases can be made for the Gerrard’’s, Lampards’ and Alonso’s of this world, handing out the end of season gong to a Liverpool or Chelsea player is going to look pretty silly if United end up winning everything in sight.

Alternatively what if Cesc Fabregas and Michael Essien - who were plagued with injury for the first half of the season - inspire their teams to do a Champions League/FA Cup double. Likewise, what if Fernando Torres scores in every remaining League game to win the title, might that have changed the voting?

Would it really be too much to ask for the £1million-a-year PFA boss Gordon Taylor to ask players to type a name on to a screen in May, hit the send button, and then tot up the scores?

Given that the award is, for most players, the one that matters because it comes from your peers outlines that it still has some credibility.

But in order to be a credible assessment of which player is the best over the course of the whole campaign, players must be given the opportunity to assess it as a whole.

SIDEBAR

 Ballots are sent out to each club’s PFA representative and once all his team-mates have voted he sends the ballots on to the scrutineers.

 You are not allowed to vote for your team-mates and if you don’t vote, your team-mates will not be illegible to win. This means that the vote is fairly comprehensive, especially as PFA membership is pretty much 100 per cent.

Interview with Ashley Jackson, GB and England International: Hockey

Daniel Triplow meets the rising star of British hockey and discovers a modest young man not feeling the weight of increasing expectations.

“I borrowed a stick and it was peeing down with rain. I got a ball in the stomach and fell awkwardly shortly after, shattered my ankle and spent four months on the sidelines”. As inauspicious starts to hockey go, Ashley Jackson’s is up there with the best of them. Yet little more than six years later, he sits in his parent’s home in West Malling, Kent, recalling his uninspiring introduction to the game with a disbelieving smile.

Now, just 21, the young starlet has played 15 times for his country and was the youngest member of the 16-man GB Olympic hockey side that finished fifth in Beijing – a tournament that brought Jackson praise from all quarters.

But sit the young man down and ask him about the last year, and he talks about his enthusiasm for the game, the respect he holds for his opponents and his thrill at sharing a dressing room with his heroes.

“It’s nice the way things are going, but it just motivates me to train harder and do better. It sounds like a cliché, but I want to keep doing the basics well. I don’t mind the spotlight. It doesn’t really affect me”.

However if the young superstar has glimpsed the full extent of his new-found fame in the sport, then he’s doing a jolly good job of hiding it.

“Obviously the popularity has gone up,” he says. “Friends and family have texted me saying, ‘You’re in the papers or you’re on the telly’. The other day someone even asked me for an autograph.”

“I worry sometimes though, that I won’t live up to people’s expectations. Always at the back of my mind is the thought that things can go down as quickly as they went up.”

This level-headedness counts for a lot, of course. In this age of manicured celebrity, Jackson is refreshingly at home being what he is.

The pleasure he gets from playing hockey for his country is captivating. His leap for joy at scoring his first Olympic goal on his debut against Pakistan was there for all to see.

For the meantime though, Ashley isn’t too bothered about looking back on his career, only forward, revealing that he did have the foresight to save the shirt from his goal scoring debut, but admitted: “It is just screwed up in the bottom of a draw somewhere.”

“The Olympics was much more than just six games of hockey though. The village, the people, the food – it was all just amazing. And the fact there was a free McDonalds where you could walk up and order like 30 cheeseburgers”, he joked, “was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen”.

However following Beijing, it seems that Jackson has much to prove. He has been labelled the brightest young talent that English hockey has ever seen, and since the games, the level-headed youngster’s profile has gone through the roof.

Appearing alongside fellow Olympians in a photo shoot for Esquire magazine recently, Jackson was dubbed the David Beckham of hockey. The young man however, was quick to dismiss the comparisons.

“It was flattering but I would prefer my profile to be raised by being the best player and not through my image.

“To be honest I didn’t even want to do the shoot – it meant I had to miss training – and when I got there I had to dress up in all this Paul Smith stuff and these Dr. Marten boots. They were so big and uncomfortable that I could hardly walk for two days afterwards.”

Jackson credits his Dad for driving him on to success in sport, but it was his grandfather and uncle who provided the early influence as they were avid ice hockey players – a sport which Ashley played at international level until he was forced to give it up at an early age.

“My family couldn’t keep up with my desire to play ice hockey so I was forced to call it a day. I was disappointed but to be fair it’s turned out ok”.

Amazingly Ashley only took up field hockey when he was enrolled to Sutton Valence School at the age of 14, a move which sparked a meteoric rise.

After reaching the club’s first team a year later, he moved on to play for East Grinstead, where he spent four successful years in the National Premier League Division, eventually making his England debut in November 2006 against the Netherlands.

And following Beijing, Jackson jetted off to Holland last August to begin playing professionally for HGC, where he is currently the league’s top goalscorer with 28 goals.

Conservatively though, Jackson remains unphased. He tells me that he has topped the English Premier Division scoring chart twice before. But it seems his current success is down to the easy-going kid’s new-found freedom abroad.

“Playing in Holland is all that I thought it would be – perfect”. I am doing what I love and scoring goals. I haven’t had much trouble coming down from the Olympics. In fact it is great to be allowed to express yourself and have fun.”

With Jackson’s hometown a short distance from the 2012 construction, the London Olympics are already well in sight. And with the added experience of Beijing under his belt, the young man has high hopes of winning a medal.

“Now we’re in the position saying ‘we’re fifth, we’ve climbed up the world rankings and people are saying do you fancy a medal?’ So if we can continue to improve like we have over the last four years then I obviously hope so.”

Jackson concludes by telling me he lives by the motto, ‘My biggest fear is being average’. At present however, it appears he has little to worry about.

Chambers's gold winning performance casts dark shadow over British Athletics

When Dwain Chambers summoned that great gold-toothed smile atop the podium at Turin ’s Lingotto Oval on Sunday, it marked one of British sport’s most extraordinary comebacks.

Simultaneously however, the spectacle also offered one of its most gnawingly uncomfortable sights.

For the first time in British athletics, a self-confessed cheat was seen clutching an individual gold medal once again.

Victim or victor, clean or tainted, cynical or naive, an example or an embarrassment. Make your own mind up.

But like any drug’s cheat before him, Chambers served his time – that expired in 2005.

Where he goes from here remains to be clarified. If anything it is out of his hands. But now it’s his newly published book that is the hanging offence.

Its newspaper serialisation has ruffled a few feathers - you cannot hope for a quiet life when you bring out a book that indiscriminately fires bullets at John Regis, Sebastian Coe and Kelly Holmes– all athletes who were exceptional examples of how
the sport can be run ‘clean’.

And in two weeks time, an IAAF council meeting in Berlin will address his comments and decide whether Chambers has embarrassed the sport enough to warrant a disrepute charge, and impose what would effectively be a lifetime ban from athletics.

It seems ridiculous to suggest that you can lie, cheat, take drugs and serve a two year ban, but it is only when you talk about it and get personal that you bring the sport into disrepute.

“I’ve written my name into the history books for the right reasons,” he said, following Sunday’s events. And you have to applaud the sentiment.

Yet at the same time, the ‘walking junkie’ may have written himself into a corner too.

And the man who thinks he can’t win probably can’t.

Most will argue that Chambers should be refused an easy ride back into athletics. After all life is not an etch-a-sketch. You can’t just get up one morning, erase your history and start again. Chamber’s knows that. But the rules state that he has a second chance.

An awful lot of debate could have been spared, however, with a zero-tolerance stance towards drug abusers in athletics.

Get caught with anything in your system from blood components to cold treatments and you are out. No excuses permitted.

Had the demon of the moment known that the penalty was absolute, that he could not pull on a vest of any hue again, then he may not have been as cavalier with the cocktail of banned substances that he took.

But the UK ’s zero-tolerance approach to drug cheats has always been injudicious. Missed drug tests and denial have served athletes well over the years. Carl Myerscough, the British record-holder in the shot put, was welcomed back with open arms after serving a two-year ban.

Christine Ohuruogu, banned for a year after missing three out-of-competition drug’s tests, had her lifetime ban from running in the Olympics overturned on appeal. She went on to win gold in Beijing . But perhaps just as importantly, her past was forgotten and her achievement admired.

Chambers on the other hand competes justifiably having served a sentence and people still complain.

Maybe it’s because he came clean. But as such, he is converted from a sinner to a victim when in fact he is the wrong target – those who set the rules are.

Let him compete. You don’t have to be pleased for him when he wins, but he has as much right as any under the current laws. And perhaps this man’s story can finally put to bed that steroid use is the only way of competing.

After all, the duty of athletics is to live with the ugliest of its past and the most threatening of its present. Chambers, for all his sins, is doing this – the people who seek to banish him are not.