SAINTS prop George Delaney is on the shortlist for the Betfred Super League Young Player of the Year for 2024.
Delaney is joined by Matty Nicholson of Warrington Wolves and Junior Nsemba of Wigan Warriors are the three nominees for the award, which will be presented at Rugby League’s Awards Night next Tuesday (October 8) at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
It means that the winner will definitely be a forward for the first time in five years.
Delaney’s Saints pack-mate Matty Lees was the last forward to win the award (in 2019), which is determined by members of the England RL Performance Unit – and for which only players who were under 21 at the start of the Super League season in February are eligible.
Delaney, still only 20 and a product of the Halton Farnworth Hornets community club in Widnes, was included in the squad for England’s mid-season international against France in Toulouse, but was an unused 18th player replacement.
He was unlucky not to be in the reckoning last year, but has been another strong performer this year in the red vee - in an often depleted Saints side.
He has really earned his spurs this term, playing 26 times and scoring one try.
The Warrington Wolves wing Josh Thewlis was the 2023 winner, preceded by Jack Welsby of St Helens in 2022 and 2021, and the Leeds Rhinos centre Harry Newman in 2020 – with Daryl Clark (2014) and Joe Westerman (2008) the only other forwards to win the award since the current Warrington coach Sam Burgess in 2007.
Nicholson, the Wolves second-row who turned 21 in July and is a product of the Siddal community club in Halifax, was also nominated for the award last season. He has already made two senior England appearances, both against France, and has signed to join Canberra Raiders in 2025.
Nsemba, also 20 and from the Wigan St Jude’s community club, lined up against Nicholson in the Betfred Challenge Cup Final at Wembley earlier this season, and has been included in Shaun Wane’s England squad for the first time ahead of this autumn’s two-match series against Samoa.
The nominees for the Betfred Super League Coach of the Year will be announced at 3.30pm tomorrow (Tuesday October 1), and the nominees to be Super League’s 2024 Steve Prescott MBE Man of Steel will be announced on Wednesday October 2, again at 330pm.
Ends…
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