Emmet Malone On Soccer: The trouble with handing out man-of-the-match awards before the end of games is, as we all know, that in football things can change dramatically in a matter of seconds.

The practice remains common, and so both judges and recipients sometimes have to live with a little embarrassment in the wake of the final whistle.

For some reason, the professional footballers in England and Scotland seem similarly keen to jump the gun with their annual end-of-season awards ceremonies. Awards that should be judged over the entire campaign get dished out almost a month before it is over. Inevitably a few of Sunday night's losing contenders for this year's honours in England and Scotland could have cause to feel aggrieved when the cup finals are out of the way and everyone breaks up for the summer holidays.

If his Dunfermline Athletic side can beat Hibernian this evening to book a place in the Scottish Cup final and then go on to overhaul St Mirren and maintain their Premier Division status then Stephen Kenny might have more cause than most to grumble.

Gordon Strachan's achievements this year - another league title won by a sizeable if reduced margin, a place in the last 16 of the Champions League and the other spot in the cup final - can hardly be underestimated but in his first season abroad, the Dubliner's feat may arguably come to eclipse those of the wise-cracking former Scotland international.

However, after Dunfermline's relegation rivals St Mirren last night surprisingly defeated Falkirk 2-0 - their first win in the league since, of all dates, St Stephen's Day - the East End Park outfit will have to make up a deficit of four points in as many games. Saturday's win over Dundee United, however, has maintained the club's recent upward momentum. Dunfermline have won three of their last four league games and a win over Hibernian, whom they beat a couple of weeks back in the championship, would add to the already significantly improved confidence levels within the squad.

The improvement has been achieved by Kenny without any resources of note. When making the appointment, club chairman John Yorkston must have been hoping for a miracle but he made it clear to the Dubliner that there would be no money for transfers and precious little for additional wages.

At the time of Kenny's arrival a Scottish paper compiled a list of 20 players who were not available to the new manager and picked a team from those laid up that, it was generally agreed, would compete better than those who were actually playing. The Irishman was philosophical about the situation. In one of his first interviews he acknowledged the difficulties he faced but also recognised he would not have been given the opportunity to take over the club had there not been fairly deep problems to begin with.

Dunfermline were three points adrift at the foot of the table back then, but as he sought to get to grips with things the situation worsened and after defeats by Kilmarnock and Celtic (1-5 and 1-2 respectively) the Pars went on a run of five games without scoring, eventually ending up nine points behind their nearest rivals.

Almost immediately, however, Kenny was making his presence felt around the club. Though his scope for change was limited by the fact that his predecessor, Jim Leishman, had moved upstairs to become director of football, the 35-year-old stepped up the training regime, relocated the sessions and dramatically overhauled the team's preparations for games.

On the pitch there were changes. Two well regarded prospects, Adam Hamill from Liverpool and Jim O'Brien from Celtic, were brought in to spice up the attack. Striker Tam McManus (27), who had been with six other clubs over the past decade without ever commanding a fee - and Hibernian midfielder Stephen Glass, were also added to the panel. Both of the latter are cup-tied this evening.

A couple of big cup wins, over Rangers then Hearts, signalled to an increasingly sceptical outside world that perhaps Kenny and his team had something about them after all and after a couple of league games in which Dunfermline were unlucky not to win, the "renaissance", as one paper referred to it yesterday, began on St Patrick's Day with a narrow defeat of Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

McManus has now played four games for his new club and been on the winning team three times. On Saturday, when just five of the players who started against Celtic at the end of last year (two of them in significantly different roles), were in Kenny's more offensively-minded line-up, he scored the winner but, just as important, the team also kept a third consecutive clean sheet for the first time this season.

The club remains an odd affair. With crowds averaging little more than 5,000 money is generated in strange ways. Not only can the club physio and chiropodist be booked for private appointments but so too can tanning and waxing sessions at the club's own beauty salon.

Kenny recently underlined the fact he intends maintaining his office about the place for the next year or two regardless of how the next few weeks go, but a win this evening would guarantee European football while three points at St Mirren next Monday night would be a huge step towards safety for a club one observer says has been "dodging a bullet for a few years now".

If it all comes to pass it will be too late for members of the Scottish Professional Footballers' Association - Strachan got their inaugural manager's award on Sunday night. Kenny's achievements, though, will hardly go unnoticed elsewhere in the game and Yorkston's gamble now looks like a pretty canny bet.