Stoke crown Matty

Stoke City’s inaugural ‘Player of the Season Stadium Show’ took place last night with Matty Etherington gaining the major award.

It was a bitterly cold evening to be sitting up at the Brit with no footie match to watch, but the first ever ‘Stadium Show’ to present the official player of the season awards took place with around 2,000 fans present.

It wasn’t a great turn-out and it wasn’t without a couple of minor glitches but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and, all-in-all, it was a good night.

Hosted by Stoke’s head of PR, Steve Buxton and Signal 1’s Liz Ellis, the entertainment also included Stavros Flatley from ‘Britain’s got Talent’ and a Potters’ quiz with teams from Radio Stoke, Signal Radio and The Sentinel.

The club also unveiled the much awaited new Adidas home strip and it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Yes, gone are any stripes on the back with just a plain red back, but the front is same as ever and (dare I say it) it didn’t look at all bad.

The winners of the awards were fairly predictable with Ricardo Fuller winning ‘Top Goalscorer’ and ‘Goal of the season’ for his fine solo run to score the winner at West Ham.

Louis Moult won ‘Academy Player of the Season’ and Ryan Shawcross earned the accolade of ‘Young Player of the Season’ – it’s still amazing to think that Ryan is only 22 and yet he’s already captained the Potters on several occasions.

Lyndon Edwards won ‘Fan of the Season’. He’ll be remembered for winning his fight in the courts against the Greater Manchester police when he was one of those turned away from the Man United match last season for doing nothing more than having a quiet drink in the pub before the match.

Robert Huth won the ‘Coaching staff’s player of the season’ and then Matty Etherington ended the evening picking up three awards: ‘Players’ Player of the Season’, Junior Potters fans’ Player of the Season and the big one – ‘The Player of the Season’.

Congrats to Matty and now let’s get him signed on to a new, longer contract….