Southampton Shrimper
Team Eggheads
Not at all. Beefy is absolutely right, it seems as if you are reading far too much into the Man of the Match awards on TV. There are no rules that say they can't choose a player from the losing team, it's just that it is an extremely rare exception that this does ever happen. All TV companies do it, they will think that the player who made the biggest contribution to the match is someone on the team that won the game, as that for them is the big story that all those glory-hunting viewers will want to hear about - who has won. I have even watched games in the past where the commentators have got all in a fluster about wanting to change their minds when the result of the game has suddenly been turned on its head in the final minutes of the game.
It is a similar situation where at whichever football ground you go to, including Roots Hall, if they announce a Man of the Match chosen by their sponsor, it will always be someone from the home team, even if they've just lost 6-0, because they know their audience is largely the home fans who are far more likely to come back the following week!
My theory about goalscorers winning the award was prefaced (twice) by the phrase "more often than not". It does not happen that way all the time, so if the scenario you describe for tomorrow night's game did happen, the co-commentator would choose a player from our team (probably someone who scored at least one of our goals), because he would have made the contribution to our team getting to Wembley and the scorer of the hat-trick for Stevenage would have done nothing to help his team progress. Similarly, were we to win 10-1 and the Stevenage goal was a goal of the season effort and all of our goals were close-range tap-ins and fumbled efforts across the line, one of our players would still get the Man of the Match award because we end up going to Wembley.
So, after all that, my point is that Sky have their routines, such as have a player from the opposition present the Man of the Match award when the game ends in a draw, in the interests of fairness, so that's what they stuck to on Sunday night. I thought the awkwardness came more from the two players, who don't usually get on to TV, finding it all a bit strange. Watch a Championship game where one of these interviews take place (admittedly after a normal League game where maybe the stakes aren't quite so high as a play-off semi-final) and the players take it all in their stride.
But then again, as I said in my earlier post, it's all quite meaningless really... :smile:
