The background of the Martin Laird Award

Since most of my readers are into the uni ultimate scene, you all should be familiar with the Martin Laird Award. If you're not, get over the to website and have a read. It should be fairly obvious to most that the idea came from the Callahan Award from the US college scene, and it's an idea I've had for a while.

It started out as a 'cut-and-paste' of the Callahan Award, but as I went through it trying to apply it to an Australian context, I found there were simply too many differences between the US and Australia for it to work. When they make the movie of my life, they'll insert the scene of the wastepaper basket piling up with rejected ideas right here. I started from scratch - who exactly did we want this award to recognise?

At AUG, there are two individual merits that a player can achieve - MVP and Green & Gold selection. As far as I know, there's no MVP award in other sports, but all of the others have G&G merit teams. I've felt that the MVP format used in ultimate doesn't necessarily find the best player at a tournament - there's a saying going around that to win MVP you have to be "the best player on a shit team." Unlike typical MVP awards where the votes are shared between the two teams, each gets their own set of votes that the opposition awards, so a standout player is always going to attract attention and votes.

But on the other hand, I have different fingers. Look at the literal meaning of the words Most Valuable Player - a Nationals player is highly valuable to a lower ranked team.

At SUG in 2005, we actually had to give 3-2-1 for guys and girls, but from both teams. At the end of the game, the two captains sat down and discussed who the best players were. This was...well, quite awkward. Trying to find a way to say that your best player was better than their best player without being a dick about it was quite difficult. In the end the case was usually 3 votes to the best player from the winning team, 2 votes to the best player from the losing team, and 1 vote to...someone else.

With the Green & Gold team, it is selected by non-players (usually coaches) so it takes care of that impartiality business. However there is always a bias towards the top 8 teams. From 2005 to 2007, only three players whose teams finished outside the top 8 made G&G - Chris Freise (Melbourne, 07), Mike Neild (QUT, 05) and Beth Rougier (QUT, 05). Even then, those teams finished 9th. There's any number of reasons why this is - the selectors tend to watch the higher ranked teams, and they may already have an idea of the players to watch for.

But I digress.

The idea of the MLA is to give recognition to the players who would otherwise get overlooked by the MVP and G&G processes. I also wanted put a focus on recruitment and development. Some teams put more effort into finding new players than others, and the "elite" players (ie: Nationals and Worlds players) already have a chance to get recognised with MVP and G&G, so they've been ruled out of contention.

I went to the Universities Committee and AFDA board with the idea, looking for feedback. The response was pretty much the same - we need to recognise the volunteers. And I thought, "Shit, why didn't I think of that?" It's quite difficult to display your volunteering prowess at AUG, so I tweaked the nomination process. Rather than simply submitting a name, clubs would also have to give a short write-up on why they are being nominated. A lot of grassroots volunteering often goes unnoticed, so the intent was to have their efforts highlighted, and that being nominated by their club for the award was an honour in itself.

The reaction of more than one person is that this is a glorified rookie-of-the-year award. That was never the intention. A couple of nominees have been playing for over two years. As I've written about before, there is a high crossover between AUG and Nationals/Mixed Nationals players, which rules a lot of players out of contention. Last year, 155 players were eligible for the award. That number will be bigger this year. The 111 players who played AUG and a Nationals last year will continue to play with their clubs after they graduate, so in a few years the trend will be uni players playing on Regionals teams rather than Nationals teams because, simply put, there's no room in Nationals for everyone. By 2011, the MLA will be recognising the best uni players in Australia. There'll only be a handful of chumps still doing the Nats/AUG double.


I've been very impressed with the stories nominees so far. I don't want to go endorsing any candidates just yet, but I do have my thoughts on who I would like to see win. Judging by the nominees that I know personally, I think we've got the aims and the process right so far because and all of them would be worthy winners. I really look forward to meeting the other nominees at AUG, and hope that they all go on to be club leaders in 2009 and 2010.