In one of his many entertaining feuds with Sir Alex Ferguson that so transformed the English football landscape, Arsène Wenger once said: “Everyone thinks they’ve got the prettiest wife at home.”

The Bermuda Football Association has to be of a similar belief, surely, because why else would it attempt to disguise sleepy practices for breaking news by insisting that its “end-of-season” prize presentation take right of place in the news calendar?

The 2013-14 football season ended in the second week of April. It is now the end of August, almost five months later, yet the BFA would have us believe that we should be on tenterhooks to learn the identities of those deemed to have played the most influential roles way back when. Any opposite thinking is to be un-Bermudian, if you will, and unsupportive of the families and supporters who supposedly have been suspended in time while waiting for this big day to arrive.

In the interim, we have had the World Cup. Germany won it, were presented with the trophy and left with it. The Under-20 Women’s World Cup; Germany, won that, too, were presented with the trophy and left with it. We have had the French Open and Wimbledon in tennis, and the Masters, US Open and USPGA Championship in golf. Said awards were presented for public consumption and also in more formal settings. On the cricket field, England have completed two home Test series: one a humiliating and historic defeat by Sri Lanka, the other an uplifting, come-from-behind effort against India that salvaged the captaincy of Alastair Cook.

On the domestic front, we have had the Belco Cup in cricket. St David’s won that and were presented with the trophy twice: once on the day of winning it and then again weeks later to satisfy the sponsor further. We have had the Bermuda Day Half Marathon. The winners got their due almost promptly.

But, most significantly, we have also had Cup Match, the biggest event on the Bermuda sporting calendar. The most valuable player was chosen and acknowledged minutes after the close of play at Somerset Cricket Club on August 1.

That Terryn Fray can walk among us as Cup Match MVP four weeks before we know the identity of the football equivalent is absurd, more so because this is at least the third year in succession that the public and the “football family” have been held to ransom over the BFA’s end-of-season awards, or, should we say, “long after the season ends” awards.

On no fewer than two occasions, questions have gone unanswered as to why there has been such a delay over an event that should be so straightforward to organise.

Dennis Brown, the former Devonshire Cougars coach, spoke of his disappointment last year when the awards were held in November, three months into the season after. It goes without saying that the image that appeared in this newspaper of a group who had swept all before them could easily have been captioned: “Who died?” Such was the level of disinterest.

Don’t believe me? We’ve reprinted said photograph so you can be the judge. Should not a club who have won the Triple Crown, plus a host of individual awards be a darn sight happier than that?

As news items go, not only is the return of our athletes tonight from the Youth Olympics in China more significant, but it is also more in the public interest that the spotlight be cast in the direction of those who gave of their best on the other side of the world just last week — not five to ten months ago!

This is the age of instant gratification. The consumer wants news to hand immediately and newspapers and other media have had to react to protect its market share from extinction. The myriad forms of social media, while sneered at in the rudimentary days, play a significant role in how we connect with our public. We can no longer drag our feet with the news or sit on stories for a slow news day. The public want it now and we must position ourselves to deliver. We expect the same of those such as the BFA to be proactive and progressive.

Damon Ming, Jason Davis, Keston Lewis, Sean Brangman, Chris Caisey, Shane Hollis and Jahnai Raynor, the players nominated for the main award, deserve better.

We do not plan to ignore what football is doing at Devonshire Recreation Club tonight and the BFA has been told that in no uncertain terms, but those proceedings are of a secondary nature to current events — with the accent being on current.

Imagine the angst on Late Show with David Letterman if his scriptwriters provided him fodder that was seriously outdated.

Before returning to these parts, I had the pleasure to play cricket in the Surrey Championship for 13 years, as high up as the second of six divisions, which on present evidence is comfortably the equal of what is on show on our cricket fields week to week. For context, Kamau Leverock, one of Bermuda’s bright lights, pitched up in the fifth division at Dorking a few years ago and found that it was not all smooth sailing before moving farther south to West Sussex, where he has linked up with Horsham Cricket Club and has progressed as a cricketer.

Two months after the 2013 season ended last September, even though I knew I had played my last match in England, I had to hand my club’s fixture list for the 2014 season starting in April and more significantly, for the purpose of this column, I knew that on October 13, 2014, the annual awards dinner will be held at Kia Oval and that Peter Bowler, the former Derbyshire and Somerset batsman, will be the guest speaker.

The Surrey Championship has no paid administrators. They are all volunteers and are representative of county boards the length and breadth of England.

More pertinent to football, the Football League had its awards night on March 16, the Professional Footballers’ Association did likewise on April 27 and the Football Writers’ Association, the most lucrative of the lot, did its business on May 15.

Those folks have a heck of a lot more footballers to deal with than we do in Bermuda, but they manage to get it done in a timely manner so that the participants are in sync with their achievements.

Bermuda and England are poles apart, I know, but there is no reason for us not to get the little things right. No reason why something as basic as a prize presentation cannot be held at a maximum of one month after the season concludes.

October in 2012, November in 2013, now August in 2014? The more the dates change, the more they stay the same — late!