Individual awards aren't the reason people play in team sports, or at least they shouldn't be.
Still, the fact that the Dublin footballers haven't had a player seen as the best in the country for the last two season despite winning both Sam Maguires on offer surely won't sit well with the Dubs panel this year.
Former Dublin footballer Tomas 'Mossy' Quinn joined OTBAM this morning, and when questioned on Footballer of the Year award not making it's way to Dublin during the last two years the All-ireland winner said that while the players themselves won't mind individually, they'll be annoyed for the other players in the squad as a collective.
"The funny thing is I don't know if the individuals, take James McCarthy for example because he could have been Footballer of the Year(FOTY) last year, but I don't know if James personally would be pissed off, but I imagine all of his teammates are pissed off for him".
"They're looking at it, taking a step back, and thinking 'hang on, we've been the best team in the country for the last two years but we don't have the best player on either occassion?' But look, sometimes that does throw itself up, Bernard Brogan was the FOTY in 2010 and we got beaten in the semi-final".
"I would say that they would use it for motivation, I would say that they have felt slighted with certain decisions like that".
One point made by Quinn was the fact that Dublin are such a team and they don't rely on a single player, so that means the most talented players have to share the responsibility, spotlight, and praise out between them, where other will have a showcase star that garners a bigger chunk of the attention.
"We could sit here and Dave could argue for Brian Fenton as the best or most important player in the Dublin team, I could argue for Ciaran Kilkenny, and Ger could say Stephen Cluxton. We could probably throw in two or three more that aren't quite at that level straight away, but you look at Con O'Callaghan this summer, or Jack McCaffrey if he gets back fit and all of a sudden they're back in the conversation.
"So that probably does spread it out across the Dublin players. Now if one of them goes and has an unbelievable year it's going to have to get to some level to surpass his own teammates, but that's why I think it's one of those things where they don't care individually, but as a team they'd be like 'Jesus, one of us should have got it'.
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