HE CONFESSED the Grimsby Town promotion party had only finished at 1am last Wednesday morning, but Padraig Amond wasn't going to let that stop him from being in London to pick up yet another award.
The Mariners striker, 28, was the landslide winner of the Sports Shield Player of the Year National Game Award.
The Irishman has scored 37 goals in all competitions in his debut season to help the Mariners achieve their ultimate aim.
The 3-1 win against Forest Green Rovers at Wembley also ends their six-year stay in Non-League football.
Unsurprisingly his exploits saw him take home nine gongs at the club's end of season awards – eight player of the year awards and the Golden Boot – and a strike against Woking was voted the Mariners' goal of the season.
Now the man they call Podge has got another to add to his bulging collection and he thanked his club for helping him do it.
“It's been a fantastic season,” Amond, fresh from an open top bus around the town the day before, said. “I have to pay tribute to the management – Paul Hurst, Chris Doig, Andy Warrington and Dave Moore, and the rest of the lads because if it wasn't for all of them I wouldn't have won this.
“I'm in the easy position of standing up front and scoring tap-ins every now and again. But it's been a brilliant season and one I'm very proud of. The biggest thing of it all is that we've been promoted.
“That's what it is for Grimsby. It's a massive achievement for us and a massive thing to be back in the Football League.”
Amond says it's also the smaller things that players who have been working so hard to get into the top 92 for the first time in their careers will notice.
“We're part of history now,” Amond said. “I've said for a long time the hardest divisions in England to get out of are the Championship and the National League because of the rewards that are available.
“It's the little things. Shaun Pearson has been working so hard to be a Football League player. He's now part of the PFA, gets a PFA pension that will start coming in.
Adrenaline
“It's little things people don't think about. Then being a Football League player is what everyone strives to do and everyone wants to make sure Grimsby stay there now.”
So, his favourite goal of the season?
“When Nathan Arnold scored the third goal at Wembley it was the best feeling I've ever had in football,” he said.
“Everyone just lost it for a moment. You can't explain it, it's impossible, unless you've been involved in something like that – and to do it at Wembley in front of my family and friends who were all over for the game.
“Also doing it with the lads you've worked really hard with. The lads we have at Grimsby is a special, special group. Probably the best bunch I've worked with in football and lads who will be friends for life.
“When that went in it was probably the quickest I've moved all season, even though I'd been substituted and was off the pitch.
“I'll never forget when Liverpool won the Champions League and you saw Jamie Carragher run as quick as he did after he'd been suffering with cramp. I always wondered how he was able to do that. Now I realise adrenaline pops in and everyone was like that at the weekend.”
