McCaw's best player award is a bad joke

OPINION: WILL GREENWOOD, Gavin Hastings, Raphaël Ibanez, Francois Pienaar, Agustin Pichot, Scott Quinnell, Tana Umaga, Paul Wallace and convenor John Eales apparently watched "over 60 hours of action from 46 matches" in coming to the risible conclusion that Richie McCaw was the world's best player in 2009. They must have been watching them blindfolded.

South Africa were named IRB Team of the Year which given the Springboks augmented their Tri- Nations’ success by beating the Lions was hard to quibble with, though Ireland’s Grand Slam and unbeaten calendar year at least got some recognition in Declan Kidney being chosen as the IRB Coach of the Year. He’s come a long way from Presentation College Cork.

However, the decision to make McCaw player of the year actually discredits what had been seen as a highly prestigious award. A great player who had, by his standards, a distinctly average year, McCaw was arguably not even New Zealand’s best player of 2009 and has assuredly had better years, aside from when he won this award in 2006 (thus making him the only two-time winner ever).

He missed swathes of the Super 14 season with the Canterbury Crusaders through injury, who were beaten 36-23 in the semi-final by the Blue Bulls, and missed the All Blacks games against France in June. Even in the Tri Nations, he came off worse in his head-to-heads with Heinrich Brussow as the All Blacks lost not once, not twice, but three times to South Africa.

What more could Brian O’Driscoll have possibly done to win this award? Not alone was he an inspirational captain in Ireland’s first Grand Slam in 61 years, he was a talismanic figure in Leinster’s first ever Heineken Cup success. O’Driscoll was also the joint-leading try scorer in the Six Nations and the leading try scorer in the Heineken Cup.

Outstanding for the Lions in South Africa, O’Driscoll finished the year unbeaten with Ireland on Saturday, having scored six tries in eight Tests. And one only has to think of the many virtuoso performances, be it the Herculean efforts against England at Croke Park or against Wales in Cardiff.

He was an exceptional performer in virtually every game he played in 2009. Apparently, the aforementioned judges awarded points to the three players they thought stood out in each match, which doesn’t say much for the IRB’s system. But how O’Driscoll didn’t receive a hat-load of points every time he took the pitch is astonishing.

Or maybe “the IRB Awards independent panel of judges” didn’t take in the Six Nations? But if not O’Driscoll, then Fourie du Preez was an inestimably more worthy winner than McCaw, given he was on teams that won the Tri Nations, won a Test series against the Lions, won the Super and the Currie Cup – and more often than not – he was the best player on the pitch too.

According to the IRB, this was “the most closely contested race to be named IRB Player of the Year since the award’s inception in 2001. McCaw fought off stiff competition from Ireland’s Jamie Heaslip and Brian O’Driscoll, South Africa’s Fourie du Preez and Francois Steyn, Australia’s Matt Giteau and England’s Tom Croft during a year of memorable test match encounters”. Well, the very fact that Croft and Steyn were in the shortlist perhaps should have been a warning.

IRB chairman Bernard Lapasset was quoted as saying, presumably not with tongue in cheek: “The IRB Player of the Year Award is the ultimate accolade for a player and takes into account performances in all internationals played during the year, including the RBS Six Nations, British Irish Lions Test Series, Tri-Nations and the June and November Tests.” You could have fooled us.

Even the bookies got it wrong, having closed their books on Friday after O’Driscoll had been backed down to 4 to 9 favourite, while McCaw had been largely unbacked at 12 to 1.

The names again? Will Greenwood, Gavin Hastings, Raphaël Ibanez, Francois Pienaar, Agustin Pichot, Scott Quinnell, Tana Umaga, Paul Wallace and “convenor” John Eales.

“What more could Brian O’Driscoll have possibly done to win this award? Not alone was he an inspirational captain in Ireland’s first Grand Slam in 61 years, he was a talismanic figure in Leinster’s first ever Heineken Cup