If you are struggling through your Monday afternoon, then we highly recommend you do what we've just done, and entertain you and your office with an impromptu quiz on previous winners of the Premier League Player of the Month award: it's one of the better Wikipedia pages.
We decided to take a look at the record of Irish internationals who have won the award, and our overall record isn't too bad. We've won six awards in total, putting us tied for fifth with Wales. England are miles out in front with 92 awards, with France second on 17, Netherlands are third on 15, with Spain in fourth.
That means that we are ranked ahead of the likes of Argentina, Brazil, Belgium and Iceland.
The list of Irish players who have won the award throws up one surprising winner. Roy Keane has won twice, while Robbie Keane winning three times (one of which was shared with Dimitar Berbatov).
The surprising name on that list is one Mickey Evans: the inaugural Irish winner in April 1997. If you're unsure exactly who the Mickey Evans is, that's entirely understandable. He played up front, and was capped just once by Ireland, against Romania in the final game of the 1998 World Cup qualification group. Evans won the award in 1997 as he scored four goals in the closing straight of the Premier League season to help Graeme Souness' Southampton beat relegation.
He has been memorably described on this website as "looking like one of the nameless bass players that Noel Gallagher would have drafted in during the Be Here Now days".
Evans was born in Plymouth, where he played for the first seven seasons of his professional career, before joining Southampton in 1996. He spent the 96/97 and began the 97/98 season with Southampton, before earning a move to West Brom, where he played until 2000, whereupon he returned to Plymouth following a season at Bristol Rovers. He ended his career at Torquay United in 2007.
The only other individual award Mickey Evans won was Plymouth's Player of the Year in 2003/04.
Form is temporary etc.
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