The Gardeners' World Blog

It was the Football Writers’ Association annual dinner last night, where the cream of Britain’s sports press met to pay tribute to Thierry Henry - their player of the year for an unprecedented third time.

These events are always entertaining in one way or another – but this one in particular provided a fascinating insight into the media’s relationship with our national game.

The audience could be characterised by a single stereotype – middle-aged white bloke in a shabby suit with a soup stain on his tie (and before anyone accuses me of having a go at my colleagues, I should know because I fit the bill perfectly). On the evidence of the hundreds of faces in the Lancaster Gate Hotel, it is unlikely that the football writing community will be heralded as an example of diversity in the workplace – not for a while anyway.

In the middle of this journalistic love-in stepped Henry, the modern master and surely one of the finest two or three players ever to have graced British football.