BY MARTYN SADLER
Salford Red Devils halfback Marc Sneyd, who has enjoyed a tremendous season so far, has held off the challenge of Hull KR’s Mikey Lewis to claim the Albert Goldthorpe Medal for 2024.
Marc went into the final round of Super League matches two points ahead of Mikey. And when I saw that he wasn’t going to take to the field against Wigan last Thursday evening I wondered whether he would be pipped at the post if Mikey had a stormer against Leeds Rhinos the following evening.
As it turned out, Mikey did indeed have a good game for the Robins, but the standout star on the evening was hooker Matt Parcell, who collected three points, with Mikey only being awarded one point by our reporter Mark Chestney (Peta Hiku was awarded two points) and so he just fell short.
So our congratulations go to Marc, who has had a good weekend, having been named in Super League Dream Team, while our readers have also decided (see the opposite page) that Marc is the unluckiest player not to have been selected in Shaun Wane’s 31-man squad that will prepare for this autumn’s Test series against Samoa. And of course he may still win the Steve Prescott Man of Steel award, which will be announced early next month.
There are three interesting observations I can make about the Albert Goldthorpe Medal table.
One is that Matt Dufty and Bevan French could possibly have finished at the top of the table if they hadn’t been injured at crucial times of the season.
The second point is that the top eleven players includes four forwards – Tom Amone, Benjamin Garcia, Rhyse Martin and Junior Nsemba.
Forwards are normally regarded as the workhorses of their teams, whereas most reporters tend to award points to backs, and particularly to halfbacks, so any forward who features in the leading players has done a great job to get there.
And the final point worth noting is that of the eleven leading players, six of them come from the southern hemisphere.
That contrasts quite sharply with the makeup of this year’s Dream Team, which only contains three players from the southern hemisphere – Matt Dufty, Nene Macdonald and Rhyse Martin.
Congratulations to all the players who have made it into the Dream Team.
Meanwhile, we’ll post a full list of all of this season’s Albert Goldthorpe points on the Totalrl.com website on Wednesday afternoon.
Click here to get the digital edition of League Express
Click here to subscribe to the print edition of League Express
League Express is also widely available from local newsagents across the north of England.
