Aussie midfielder Ryan is the star man at the Brewers end of season awards
AUSSIE IS RUNAWAY WINNER, WHILE CARTER SECOND
RYAN Edwards has been voted the Burton Albion Player of the Year by the club’s season ticket holders.
And the popular Australian midfielder made it a double when his team-mates voted him the Players’ Player of the Year as well.
The main prize was revealed to have gone Edwards’ way when the club held their annual awards online last night.
With the normal event unable to be held at the Pirelli Stadium, the club invited season ticket holders, vice-presidents and sponsors to the online event and it was they who were also invited to vote.
It is unlikely that the result would have been different had it been opened up to all of the club’s supporters, as it usually is.
Edwards was a clear favourite among fans, to judge by comments made on the various social media platforms.
Although an injury picked up in the previous game, against Gillingham, may keep him out of Sunday’s last game of the season away to Oxford United, he has made 46 appearances in this campaign and has been a regular under both managers this season, Jake Buxton and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
His wholehearted performances won him the respect of his teammates and Brewers supporters alike.
Edwards was a runaway winner after taking nearly half of all votes cast.
On-loan centre-half Hayden Carter, who was Hasselbaink’s first signing for the Brewers, in January, came second in the poll.
Although he only played for half of the season, Carter, whose parent club are Blackburn Rovers, immediately helped shore up a defence which had conceded 50 goals before the halfway point in the season.
The 21-year-old’s strong, assured defending and calmness on the ball belied his years and he has popped up with four goals for good measure.
The top goalscorer award went to Kane Hemmings.
The Burton-born striker, in his first season with his home town club, did not get off the mark until the 10th game but has scored 15 goals since then, many of them classic poacher’s close-range strikes, and the highlight was a brilliantlytaken first-half hat-trick in the 3-0 win away to Crewe Alexandra in March.
Hemmings also picked up two awards, as he was declared the Community Player of the Season for his work away from the game.
Hemmings had already been awarded the club’s Professional Footballers’ Association Community Champion award.
An extra, one-off award was made to Fleur Robinson, the daughter of chairman Ben Robinson, who has left the club after 25 years’ service to take over as chief executive at National League club Wrexham.
Fleur has held several positions with the Brewers and most recently was the club’s commercial director.
The award she was given was titled Special Recognition for Exceptional Services to Burton Albion.
To mark Burton Albion’s 70th anniversary season, four Brewers legends from the 1950s were inducted into the Hall of Fame: Nobby Hadfield, Bill Townsend, Reg Weston and Dave Mcadam.
AJ “Bert” Hadfield, known to all as Nobby, played in the club’s first game in 1950, captained the side and made 271 appearances until 1957.
A crowd of almost 5,000 attended his benefit game against First Division Charlton Athletic in April, 1956.
Townsend, a goalkeeper who also had the Smith’s Arms at Branston, played 201 games for the club in two spells between 1953 and 1960.
His finest hour was the FA Cup run of the 1955-56 season when Burton reached the third round of the FA Cup.
They got there by knocking out Halifax Town after a replay in the second round, Townsend making a string of saves despite a shoulder injury as the first game finished goalless.
Reg Weston, as player-manager, was involved in that cup run but also led the club to their first piece of silverware, when they won the Birmingham Senior Cup in 1954. He played 158 games for the club.
Mcadam, a wing-half – a midfielder we would say now – was widely regarded as one of the best ball-players at Burton’s level and played 238 games between 1951 and 1960.
The awards were hosted by Matt Hancock, the club’s head of community, with manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, his assistant Dino Maamria and skipper John Brayford on hand to talk through the season.
Chairman Ben Robinson thanked all the sponsors, season ticket holders and partners for their support and congratulated the manager, his staff and squad on saving the club from relegation after a remarkable turnaround in fortunes.
He said: “It has been a tradition of Burton Albion to end the season with our awards night and to celebrate all we have achieved over the last year.
“Sadly, we couldn’t do that by all being in a room together but only by Zoom, which has become the new normal in the pandemic.
“That just shows how much we have had to do to adapt and meet the challenges brought to us by the pandemic, which have affected everyone in all walks of life.
“We are always reminded that so many things are more important than football and nothing has done that more than the last year of dealing with Covid-19.
“But we have also seen again how football can be the starting point for a community response and how the club has been able to step up and make a difference.
“We are therefore proud of what we have been able to achieve on and off the pitch this year.”