Marcus Haber has bagged the best number 9 in the league award after his winner against Coventry City on Sunday afternoon.
This season, Prostate Cancer UK is the official charity of the Football League. Each week former Stevenage man Adrian Clarke - who also played for Arsenal, Rotherham, Southend, Carlisle - is rounding up the best performances by No9s in the Football League, in recognition of the fact that prostate cancer affects one in nine men. In week four (Sat 8 / Sun 9 Sept), he highlights a towering Canadian super-sub.
League 1 star man
Marcus Haber - Stevenage
Why?
When I signed for Stevenage in 2000, Coventry sat proudly in the Premier League while my Broadhall Way team-mates and I battled away as part-timers in the Conference. What a difference a dozen years makes, because my old club are now unbelievably 17 places higher than the Sky Blues in the Football League thanks to a 2-1 success at the Ricoh Arena. It's been a phenomenal rise for the Hertfordshire side and I couldn't be happier for them.
Hero of this previously unimaginable victory was Canadian new boy Marcus Haber, who climbed off the bench to send the Boro fans into raptures. His second-half winner came from a near-post training ground corner routine (as an ex-Arsenal man, this pleases me greatly!), with the Stevenage man reading Darius Charles' flick-on perfectly before powering a bullet header in off the crossbar. It was the kind of goal that big No9s are made for.
Did you know?
The 6ft 3in front man has represented Canada at every level from Under-15's to the full national team, and has often played as a centre-back for the Canucks.
No9s scored a respectable 13 per cent of League 1's goals last weekend