I thought this would be a two horse race, and it was just a case of who came first and who second, then who was the best of the rest, but clearly not everyone agreed with me. In the end it was the three who got the multiple match wins who ended up in the top three positions.

Steven Nelson had taken an early lead on Saturday and Sunday, but Ben surged into a big lead on Monday, and whilst Steven pulled a few back by the end of the week, Ben (26 top places) just held Steven off by two (the next best was nine)

Steven easily took second place (once second preferences were added) 22 ahead of the next best (although extra votes for Ben widened the gap between them to seven)

Third spot went to the third player to get multiple weekly winners, and if Ben and Steven do the spectacular, Glenn Chesher quietly gets on with his job, as previously mentioned playing every minute of every game this season.

Chris Park was just one vote behind Glenn, and Dan Shorrock (who got the third highest number of top choices), a further two behind Chris.

Ben further increased the gap to Steven to ten, with 57 top three places – but as noted above, with 84 voting, quite a few did not have them in their top three (nine did not include either in their top three).

Only one of the fourteen on the short list failed to get at least one top spot, but he finished well up the leader board, when all top three places were taken into account. One with a top spot, was only named in their top three by two others, whilst another got two top spots from just five top three finishes.

When looking at how I did the scoring in 2020, I found this was year seven of a Man of the Season vote, and again all previous Season winners, James Gough, Matt Houghton, Glenn Chesher, Kris Bratton; Nick Carlton and Greg Wrathall, made appearances this season – with Matt, Glen and Greg being on this year’s short list.

Thanks to everyone who voted, both this time and throughout the season.

Whilst it is just a bit of fun, it is also an important indication of appreciation for those who have done something extra in a game.

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FOOTNOTE

If we do this again next year, someone please remind me to do it differently !

With last year’s survey provider there was a simple table of first, second and third choice votes, for me to work it out. This one used their own weighted average, with no breakdown of votes shown, and whilst Ben did finish top, Steven was in fifth place (I later worked out that as some as suggested did only vote for the top three, if Steven was not in their top three, as he is bottom of the alphabetical list, he was shown as their fourteenth choice)

After a bit (lot) of (total) panic, and thought I may need to abandon the vote, I found a way to view individual votes (all anonymous – unless I know your IP address – which I don’t).

So I ended up analysing 84 sets of votes, and what I thought would be a two minute job took close to two hours

Whilst I had been checking how many votes were cast through the week (in case we passed the 100 limit) I did not check how they were voting. So I only know Steven had a lead, and Ben overtook him, due to my unexpected set of work.

The other surprise for me, was despite putting the vote on the website, then testing it worked – someone beat me to getting the first vote in.

Very interesting - but I would rather have not needed to do it !