IT was great to see Tom Cairney follow up his nomination at the Northwest Football Awards with a fine goal at Norwich last night.

Tom has been nominated for the rising star award along with Ross Barkley, which is very good company to be in.

I am a bit surprised that he wasn’t nominated for the Championship’s player of the year award as well, but it’s often the case that people only focus on the strikers who score the goals.

Jordan Rhodes was a big player for Rovers last season and did score a lot of goals, so his nomination is deserved.

James McArthur is another who did well at Wigan, although all the talk was about Danny Ings and the goals he scored at Burnley, so he might have a chance of winning the award.

But Tom deserved to be in there as well. He came in from Hull and has done really well at Blackburn.

He has started this season well and I hope he will keep getting better.

It’s hard to say how good he will become at this stage, though.

At that age the most important thing is that players stay grounded.

Hopefully he will be one that does, but 80 per cent of players start to believe their own hype.

That is a massive test because you become a big name.

I was lucky at that age that I had good friends around me.

I was famous but they weren’t. We would go out at the weekend and if they thought I was getting full of myself they would tell me. That was what I needed.

Some players don’t have that, but hopefully Tom will.