Sports editor lauded for football writing

Hawke's Bay Today sports editor Anendra Singh has won a national award.

The 48-year-old won the inaugural Regional-Community Writer of the Year category of the annual 2011 New Zealand Football Awards in Hamilton on Thursday night.

Mark Dawson, of the Wanganui Chronicle, and Mike Dinsdale, of the Northern Advocate, were highly commended in the category which the New Zealand Football Media Association has introduced for the first time this year.

Singh, who was a 2011 Canon Media Awards finalist in the sports news/feature writer categories, submitted the following winning portfolio of stories:

The Bluewater Napier City Rovers' gut-wrenching loss to Wairarapa United in the Chatham Cup (knockout) final last winter in Palmerston North.

The Kinetic Electrical Hawke's Bay United's turbulent times last summer in the ASB Premiership.

A profile on New Zealand age-group representative, Luke Rowe, the England-born son of a Bay Maori father and an English mother, who came to find his roots here.

The husband-and-wife coaching rivals, Rachel and Henry Harland, whose Lindisfarne College and Central Hawke's Bay College boys' teams were playing a match against each other.

Judge Armin Lindenberg said: "Too many entries in this category were either match previews or match reports. But three reporters - Mark Dawson, Mike Dinsdale and Anendra Singh - had a good balance of well-written stories and were hard to separate.

"In a close call, Singh took the judge's vote," Lindenberg said at the awards night, held at the Waikato Room of Sky City Hamilton.