For those who missed it on Saturday

Congratulations to young Dennis! He was not my top choice but he is fully deserving. Good to see there was such competition for it, really could have gone to 4-5 players.

The voting is now closed and with over 35% of the vote the winner is Dennis Buckley! A very tight race this year, with Matt, Aly and Tom picking up a lot of votes, but Denis has been hugely effective in the scrum all season, as well as being incredibly industrious in the loose as usual, and thoroughly deserves the award.

With only one vote between all of the contenders for Young Player of the Year, we'll be having a runoff to get a better representation. This might seem like a long winded way of doing it, but its the best way we can think of to avoid the problems that Sol mentioned above.

clanman wrote: i was sure when i looked earlier that denis was one point behing healy now he is 2 points ahead, i smell a rat

I've seen enough of these to know that a late swing is not unusual, but I looked into it and there were no new users registered on the forum yesterday, so the late surge was entirely made up of existing users and everything looks above board.

clanman wrote: i was sure when i looked earlier that denis was one point behing healy now he is 2 points ahead, i smell a rat

Give people a vote shur an' :lol: they go mad

i was sure when i looked earlier that denis was one point behing healy now he is 2 points ahead, i smell a rat

I don't want to use my vote to sway things so I'm voting for Muldowney but part of me wanted to vote for Darragh Leader not that I think he's been our player of the year but I think he would make a more appropriate winner for the ypoty.

If I understand the voting rules correctly, as things stand Robbie Henshaw is currently in line to pick up the young player award which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with but I think there is a strong argument for DL having made a more telling contribution to this season.

I've looked up the player stats from this season on the Pro12 site and DL has made 18 appearances this term with 5 from the bench and a total of 1,005 minutes played which compares to RH's 9 starts and 720 mins.

I can't see the european total mins played but DL has made 7 appearances with 3 from the bench compared to RH's 4 starts.

Ok just because DL has been more present in the team this year it doesn't necessarily follow he has been a better ypoty than Robbie but I do think (if it's not too much trouble) maybe we need a separate spin off vote for the ypoty especially given there's only been a single vote RH as things stand.

I know Decadence has said there will be a separate vote if there is no clear winner, so I guess does this qualify?

Last call for anyone who hasn't cast their vote on this

salmson wrote: Problem with that is that voting for an older player - Buckley or Muldowney for instance - means you only get to vote for one of the awards. This disadvantages the older players as it makes it more likely that a young player will scoop both awards as voters will be inclined to get more bang for their [strike]buck[/strike] vote.

I don't think that's likely to be a problem, but if there's no clear winner of the ypoty then we'll have a run off vote specifically for that, like we did with Gavin and Ray McLoughlin for the Hall of Fame.

It's a vote for your best player. If the best player happens to be under 23, then they (deservedly) get both awards. We were also getting into a situation where it was possible that the winner of the Player of the Year might be under 23, but the actual Young Player award might go to someone else. Not an entirely perfect situation, but it worked last year after a lot of consultation and it's the method we'll be using going forward.

Tough list this year. Many solid players, with few standouts like in previous years. More to do with the general quality of the team rising than anything else. Hmmm.

Decadence wrote: Like last year there's a single poll, the highest ranking young player will win that award.

Problem with that is that voting for an older player - Buckley or Muldowney for instance - means you only get to vote for one of the awards. This disadvantages the older players as it makes it more likely that a young player will scoop both awards as voters will be inclined to get more bang for their [strike]buck[/strike] vote.

Like last year there's a single poll, the highest ranking young player will win that award.

What do you do if you want to vote for both awards? Can only pick one person at the minute

Voting is now open, the poll will close sometime next week. Players marked by an asterisk are eligible for Young Player of the Year.

EDIT: The names were entered in alphabetical order, but for some reason Quinn has jumped up, must be a bug brought about by the fact there are more than 10 entries.