Player of the Year/Young Player of the Year

Hi all

No where near that time of the year, but there was a bit of discussion last year about the criteria for eligibility for Young Player of the Year.

Last year to qualify, a player had to be 23 or younger at the start of the season. This year (and from here on out) the suggestion is that we do it by who has not yet turned 24 by the end of the season (i.e. 1st June 2014). So, if you turn 24 on 31st May, you’re not in the running for young player. Let us know what you think.

There was a suggestion last year that once a player wins Young Player they would no longer be eligible for Young Player and would have to compete in Player. (i.e. are Kieran Marmion and Robbie Henshaw in the running for Young Player this year?)

Can you be eligible for both Player of the Year, and Young Player of the Year? This might give rise to a situation where a player might win Player of the Year but not Young Player. Bit of an oddity.

Anything else we should clarify?

Get to voting here: docs.google.com/forms/d/1OSCSS87796FWCxQ...AgPrH1WKULI/viewform

Personally I dislike the idea of discounting previous winners. If you are good enough and young enough you should win it.

If you are young enough to qualify for YPotS but are nominated for PotS then I think that that should disqualify you from nomination in YPotS. So Henshaw could win YPotS again, unless he is nominated for PotS, in which case he is discounted from the YPotS.

The easiest way to do it of course is that if you are eligible for YPotS then you are ineligible for PotS. So basically two entirely separate competitions. Of course that means that PotS might not be the best player of the season!

My call would be that you're of the age, you're eligible for young player only, regarldess of whether you're the best player on the team or if you've won it before. Makes things cleaner.

sea_point wrote: Young PLayer should always be a once off award, it's really a breakthrough award for young players starting to make an impression in the First XV...

What if we don't have a breakthrough player on the senior team?

Yeah people will probably spread their votes. For example if Henshaw is in both, people might vote for him and then vote for Marmion in YPotS just "to be fair". So Henshaw could win PotS but not YPotS despite being eligible. This is my main issue with the setup as is.

What we could do is run the PotS first and if the winner is eligible for YPotS then they automatically win it.

ummm, wrote: How about one big list and the highest placing player under 23 wins the YPotS?

If a senior player is dominating the vote then maybe no one will vote for an under 23 player. Or if a lot of people vote for the senior players and only a very few vote for the under 23 the vote will not be representative.

We would have to do a PR system!