We had some wonderful entries in the 2008 Roar Armchair Sports Writer Award, our search to find Australia’s next great sports writer and turn them into a paid columnist.
We now have a winner!
After Roar readers voted on the weekly entrants, we were left with five finalists. Our expert judging panel — Liz Ellis, Peter Fitzsimons, Philip Derriman, and The Roar’s own Spiro Zavos — then made their comments, and ultimately chose one winner. And now those votes are in.
The five finalists were: Benjamin Conkey for his piece entitled, China second on the medal tally? Only in America; Gabriel Knowles with Only four teams can win the EPL; Rory O’Donovan with What Next For Federer? A Coach Would Help; Benjamin with For the Wallabies, it’s Advance Australia bare; and Jason Gray with his article, The Mariners bring grassroots football to a rugby heartland.
We are now pleased to announce that the ultimate winner – and future Roar columnist is … wait for it … drum roll, please … Benjamin Conkey!
On behalf of all the Roar editors, we would like to congratulate Benjamin Conkey and welcome him on-board.
Of his insightful and well-written article, our judges were effusive. Peter Fitzsimons said:
“Good, conversational style, which works well in sports writing, and he made an interesting point, with a good light dressing of stats.”
While Spiro Zavos concurred:
“Benjamin Conkey got the vote from me, from an entertaining suite of articles, because he came at his subject from an interesting angle. The writing was topical, opinionated, informed and had a nice ironic edge, qualities that The Roar espouses.”
The very close runner up was Rory O’Donovan. Liz Ellis said this of his article:
“It was well written and articulate. Rory’s premise was clear and he established himself early as respectful of Federer before going onto critique an important part of his preparation. I particularly liked how Rory took a different approach to Federer’s season rather than falling into the “Federer is finished” trap. I am looking forward to reading more of Rory’s work!”
Philip Derriman said of O’Donvan’s article:
“It reads pretty well; it makes a point; and it holds the reader’s interest until the end.”
Congratulations to Benjamin Conkey and a big thank you to all the other finalists, whose writing was of such a high standard. The judges, all professional journalists themselves, were very impressed by the high quality of the articles, which really is a reflection on the all the talented Roar readers we have out their, getting their opinion across intelligently. Keep an eye out for Benjamin Conkey as he begins a new regular column on The Roar.
You can read all the nominated articles here. Should we run this award again? Let us know in the comments below.
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