The Guardian won two awards and was highly commended in four other categories at the Sports Journalists’ Association awards on Monday .
Donald McRae was named sports feature writer of the year while Daniel Taylor was named football writer of the year, in both cases for the second year in succession.
Judges paid tribute to McRae’s “elegant writing, drawing the reader along effortlessly keeping us engaged about subjects we thought we had little interest in”. Taylor was praised for being an “outstanding journalist who has provided yet more stunning work”, as well as someone who has made an “important impact on the game of football”.
David Conn was highly commended in the sports news reporter category while Taylor and Marina Hyde were highly commended in the sports columnist category. Ewan Murray was highly commended in the specialist correspondent category.
The Daily Mail was named sports newspaper of the year.