A dramatic battle for last week's much coveted Man of the Match Award quickly turned into a closely fought two horse race. An exhilarating poll which had the Swingometer oscillating wildly, could have been said to represent the watershed in the changing nature of footballing values, had not the eventual outcome resulted in a narrow victory for an outmoded and blinkered philosophy firmly rooted in the previous millennium.

Not long ago "If Selected..." trumpeted that "assists were the new goals" and here we had a straight battle between old and new thinking. In the retro corner was Craig Taylor, grabbing a rare chance to play up front with both feet and burying a lethal hat-trick that so nearly retrieved something from a cause that seemed lost at half time. Representing the way forward was Frenchman Sandric Loriot with a display of guile, flare and creativity rarely seen back in the twentieth century, and which found him bagging a brilliant hat-trick of assists.

And how did the Knowledgable Footballing Public (KFP) respond to this opportunity to democratically endorse progress? Well, initially with some trepidation, as the knee-jerk voting patterns favoured the man who'd got his name stamped indeliably on the scoresheet. By Wednesday, Taylor had three times as many votes as Loriot, but slowly some of the more forward thinking members of the electorate tentatively dipped their toes into the polling booth, and by election day the votes were exactly tied. But then, just as the polls were about to close, a deciding ballot paper came stumbling through cyber-space and confirmed Taylor as this week's Man of the Match.

Taylor produced a classic display of the centre-forward's art by all accounts (well the match report anyway) and we can only stand on the sideline and admire that. And whilst we also retain an unshakeable belief in democracy, we can't help wondering whether this backward thinking may turn out to be the footballing equivalent of electing George Bush Junior. Only time will tell whether the KFP are able to move on and recognise Assisting for the beautiful and complex artform that it is.