I don't know Monaghan lady Paula Kirke; indeed, I had never even heard her name before I received her picture by email, receiving the award as Quinn Insurance Ulster GAA Writers monthly winner for April.
Now I don't want to sound uncharitable or downright nasty, but I am as amazed now as I was when I first was told that a Scor All-Ireland champion had won it - in a month when four Ulster teams reached all the National League football finals and Down
footballers were crowned Ulster U21 champions.
Don't run away with the idea that I don't believe Scor participants do not have their rightful place in the GAA, and let me straight away nail the notion that I have a problem with a woman winning it. No. It's because I cannot even begin to think that Paula, as good a ceili dancer as she may well be, was by any stretch of the imagination the most meritorious for this award in the month of April.
Had she won it in November or December or maybe even January, fair enough, maybe I'd perhaps be persuaded to see the argument.
But I really can't appreciate that her achievement topped that of the many players or managers who played a role in Down, Derry, Monaghan and Antrim getting to the finals of those four national events or the Mourne county U21s winning the provincial title.
As a member of the Writers body, I can go along with the decision - albeit grudgingly, but that doesn't mean I have to like it; and I claim the full entitlement to express my views on it even if a few people might not feel I should do so in print. However, to them I say that - if they are convinced that Paula is a worthy winner then they can be happy in the knowledge that my questioning it will make me look a whingeing old fool.
Enough said on that thorny topic, but - on a related matter - I salute Fermanagh man Sean Quinn on his decision to become title sponsor of the GAA Writers under the Quinn Insurance banner. A huge boost for Jerry Quinn, elected chairman after just a year as a member, it's what can best be described as a superb deal for the scribes and, hopefully, for the company who will now be linked to UGAAWA for the next five years, with the 2009 annual awards dinner appropriately taking place in Slieve Russell Hotel, the venue for what I recall as the most enjoyable function we've had - even if the golf was rained off for everyone, save our fourball.
