Who will win NYC awards?

This year’s National Youth League (Holden Cup) player awards will be hotly contested at the annual awards night at the QT Hotel, Surfers Paradise next Monday night.

The Gold Training Titans team had a mixed season after winning their first two games and losing their third by one point to Newcastle, when down to 13 fit players for most of the second half.

Injuries saw them struggle for form and confidence for several weeks after that but they recovered to win six of their last 10 games and during the season were victorious against seven of the top eight teams, failing to beat only seventh-placed Warriors.

However there were some impressive performers during 2015, and competition will be fierce for the awards on Monday night – players’ player award, the NYC True Titan award and the player of the year.

Brian Kelly had a fine season that saw him chosen for NSW’s under-20s Origin side and score four tries on the left wing. He played 20 of the 24 games and was the top try-scorer with 11.

Left-centre Jed Cartwright bagged eight tries in just 10 games but an ankle injury that eventually needed surgery curtailed his progress.

Karl Lawton and Oshea Tuiasau played for Queensland’s Origin side and certainly had a large influence on the Titans side when on the field. Both played 20 games but unfortunately Tuiasau finished the season with an ACL injury in the final match against the Cowboys and will be a late starter to next season when he moves to the NRL squad, as will Lawton.

A much improved player and a model of consistency was second-rower Hayden Schwass, who must be in the running for an award on Monday night. He failed to make the side for the opening clash of the year but was arguably the most consistent performer over his 20 games during the season.

So too was tough prop Max Elliott missed only two matches in 2015 and mixed it with what were often much bigger opposition forwards with real aggression and enthusiasm while Tuiasau was the man who led from the front, always willing to take up the ‘ugly’ early hit-ups and work hard defensively in the middle of the ruck.

Josh Berkers became a good consistent performer after establishing himself in the side while Rory Humphreys proved as committed as any player in Ben Woolf’s line-up. And halfback Braydon Torpy gave the team direction and proved a first-class general, playing 23 games, the most in the team along with forward Shane Wright who was another solid contributor all year.

The side was well-led by co-captains Parahi Wilson (22 games) and Shaun Hudson (20 games) who were regularly amongst the team’s best performers each week.

Hudson (pictured) had a strong season alternating between centre and fullback early in the season before settling at fullback. He was the team’s leading point-scorer with 100 after taking over the goal-kicking duties from Cartwright and had a tremendous workrate and involvement in much of the team’s tries and attacking opportunities. Hudson surely will feature in the awards reckoning.

The players’ basic stats in 2015 are below. Who will be on stage to accept awards on Monday night?