Cahill and Kruse receive January honours

MELBOURNE: February 2010

Professional Footballers Australia (PFA), with the support of LUCRF Super, happily announces Everton’s Tim Cahill and Melbourne Victory’s Robbie Kruse respectively as January’s PFA Footballer and Young Footballer of the month.

The nominations were made by the PFA Awards Committee based on performances so far this season for club and/or country.  

Cahill, the inaugural PFA Footballer of the Year, has been in excellent form in the English Premier League scoring 6 goals in 31 appearances for his club.  The popular attacking midfielder has captained his club for most of the season in the absence of regular skipper, Phillip Neville.  The Socceroo star has also produced excellent performances on the international stage scoring 2 goals in 4 appearances, including a brace against Ireland in August.  Cahill will undoubtedly be called upon to drive Australia’s attack at the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals later this year.    

Former Joey and Young Socceroo, Kruse has produced some outstanding performances in the A-League since transferring from Brisbane Roar in September. The silky forward has scored 4 goals in 17 appearances for his club, including a first half hat trick against Perth in January.  The Victory will look for Kruse to lead its offense and continue his excellent run of form into the A-League finals as regular strike-partner Archie Thompson is out of action for up to a month after recently sustaining a foot injury.

Cahill and Kruse are the sixth players to win the monthly awards and become likely nominations for the PFA Footballer of the Year Awards to be presented at the Australian Football Awards to be held in Melbourne on 22 May 2010 in conjunction with Football Federation Australia.  The monthly nominations to date are:    

Month	PFA Footballer of the Month	PFA Young Footballer of the Month
August	Jason Culina	Rhys Williams
September	Josh Kennedy	Adama Traore
October	Mark Schwarzer	Ben Kantarovski
November	Harry Kewell	Tommy Oar
December	Mark Bresciano	Dario Vidosic
January	Tim Cahill	Robbie Kruse

The PFA Awards Committee consists of some of the greatest Australian former professional players and current leading football journalists, including Francis Awaritefe, Dave Davutovic, Craig Foster, Andrew Harper, Stan Lazaridis, Michael Lynch, Paul Okon, Andrew Orsatti, Paul Trimboli, Tony Vidmar and David Zdrilic.  PFA Chief Executive Brendan Schwab is the non-voting Chair of the Committee.