The Alternative Sports Awards 2010

1 THE Mary Byrne award for best female performance this year, happily, has been marked by our girls representing on the world stage.

From Derval taking another silver medal at the European Championships in Barcelona last July to the peerless Katie Taylor pinning another bauble on her vest at the world championships in Barbados later in the summer.

Teenage swimmer Gráinne Murphy glided to a wonderful second place at the Europeans — but for us the U17s’ World Cup adventure in Trinidad and Tobago deserves a nod, if not solely for the imaginative goal celebrations. As MaBy sang, this is a man’s world — but it’d be nothing without a woman or a girl.