Pride for club as full-back receives top league honour
ANOTHER honour was bestowed upon Widnes RUFC recently, as news was received that first team full-back Andrew Owens had been selected as the ADM Player of the Year.
The award was a new innovation in the Lancashire County RU Leagues last season, with Clubs invited to provide their choice of the opposition’s Man of the Match.
As expected, the battle for votes throughout the season was keenly fought.
Along the way, there was strong support for Darren Wilson and Alex McClurg from Liverpool St Helens, Tom Davies (Oldham), Sam Gee (Wigan) and Daniel Martin (Aldwinians).
However, it was the Widnes fullback who emerged as the clear and deserved winner.
The award has capped a tremendous last 12 months for the player.
Not only has he been a stand-out player for the Red-and-Blacks, he was also selected to play for Lancashire Under 20s, culminating in a try scoring performance against Yorkshire at Rugby HQ Twickenham.
More recently, he was also selected to play for Lancashire Royals who beat Yorkshire based Anti-Assassins at Blackburn RUFC in December.
Full back Owens has been a revelation since coming into the first team back in 2017, when he made his debut against Sefton when the team played in South Lancs Cheshire 1.
But it is his form over the last couple of seasons in the newly-formed Lancashire Leagues which has really caught the eye, and where his individual performances and statistics have made impressive reading.
Over those last two years, he has appeared in 45 matches out of a total of 48 games.
In that time, he has scored 21 tries, which included a sequence of scoring a try in nine successive matches.
In that time, he also added 136 conversions, as well as booting over a further 43 penalties, at an impressive success rate of 77%.
To put it all into context; it means that he has scored an individual points tally of 519 points from a sum total points aggregate of 1478 which is an incredible return.
Head coach Andy McIntosh said: “It is a great achievement for Andy to be recognised for his personal contribution this season.
“This was voted on a weekly basis by the opposition so independent from our club.
“It shows what a danger he was with ball in hand and from the kicking tee throughout the season.”
He continued: “There were a number of other contenders from the club who pushed him all the way – consistency in performance has been a key contributor to our success, and when the lockdown lifts, we will take time for sure to celebrate the award and another successful season.”
Club captain Kevin Leadbetter said of his full-back: “Andy has been fantastic for us this year with his tries and goal kicking, and I think he would easily have passed the individual 300point mark if the season hadn’t finished early. He fully deserves the ADM Player of the Season Award.”
Andrew will now receive the Player of Year Trophy and £100 voucher to spend on anything in the ADM catalogue.