Cometh the hour; cometh the man

To have the respect of your peers is the best thing

As a sports fan, a tennis fan and a mahoosive Andy Murray fan, obviously I was glued to Five Live on Monday, listening to his final match in the Australian Open.

Non-tennis fans bear with me, I’ll get to the point eventually. We all knew it was probably going to be his last match at that particular tournament, possibly ever, but it so nearly wasn’t. Quite how Murray, who admits to being in pain every time he puts his socks on, managed to return from two sets down to take the match to five sets over four hours is astonishing.

It was a great tennis match by any measure. Thinking of the mental reserves that he must have had to find to get through the pain and play that well, makes me slightly ashamed of my complaints every Saturday morning as I stagger, red-faced and wheezing, up the hill at the end of our local 5K parkrun. Talk about Cometh the hour, Cometh the man. It was almost unbelievable and felt a privilege to be able to listen to it.

The tribute reel the organisers played at the end of the match had me with a distinct ‘something in the eye’ feeling and led Murray to remark, rather humbly:  “To have the respect of your peers is the best thing and it is very nice of them to say all that”.

Which brings me – at last – to the point of this particular blog. The respect, recognition and admiration of one’s peers is, indeed, the best thing. The benchmarking feature that is the annual BMJ League Tables is published this week in the January issue and shows the merchanting world just how well the top 50 are doing compared with their peers.

The League Tables, however, are only about the numbers. Respect, recognition and admiration of one’s peers and, yes, competitors, is what our BMJ Industry Awards were launched to promote.

It’s been really exciting to see how many nominations we have had already and also, how many of the industry’s top names have decided that they want to support us on this. Because we are also awarding accolades to supplier brands, as well as the top merchants, this really is an awards programme for the whole industry. It gives everyone a chance to highlight those companies and individuals that they believe make a difference.

We have slightly extended the deadline until January 23^rd, so if you haven’t done so yet, you have just over a week to get your nominations and entries in before we close it down and then open the voting portal. There’s no long essay to write on your entry form, just follow the link HERE and fill out the details of those companies, individuals and brands that you feel deserve the respect of their peers.

Then when you’ve done that, block out Friday May 17^th May in your diary and book your train ticket to London to see whether your choices made it through. It’ll be a blast, I promise.