91Èȱ¬

Can't wait for this years event. With Ireland winning the Grand Slam and United about to win the CL and Premiership!!!! and Munster the Heineken Cup!!!! Team of the year will be an interesting one. Great to see sheffield Get the event. I was in Birmingham in 2007 and it was fantastic. Can I please put in my reservation for tickets this year. Should be a great show. Thanks 91Èȱ¬ for brining it around the country

I suppose you could call this a double coup for Sheffield by winning SPOTY and retaining the Snooker world champs. I guess this is good for Sheffield but unfortunately after last years disgusting bias towards the Olympics I will sadly for the first time in my 35 years of existence will not be watching it. I used to look forward to SPOTY mainly because there was always indepth reviews of the football and F1 season but last year we had Man Utd conquer Europe and Lewis Hamilton winning his first F1 crown and they barely got a mention. All SPOTY seemed interested in was cycling, swimming and yatching which seemed to be fulfilling some form of government mandate to give the atheletes all the air time. I understand the 91Èȱ¬ has to be PC and give a fair coverage of all sports but I think the scales were tipped way too far in one direction!

To be honest I was shocked, disapointed and dismayed by the blatent ignorance of very high profile sports in SPOTY 08 that in my eyes should take precidence over some posh bloke sailing around a big pond every 4 years.

I dont expect this to be published but I hope someone at the 91Èȱ¬ may actually understand my frustrations and take heed. I honestly do not know one person either at work or in my social circles that actually approved of SPOTY 2008.

Yours former SPOTY viewer.

Sports... (Thank goodness for Sky and Setanta)

Will the Ireland rugby team qualify for consideration as Team of the Year? The Republic is obviously outside the UK but Northern Ireland is within it. An interesting and unprecedented anomaly, I guess ...

There are many programmes already on TV that provide in depth coverage of football. Even Formula One which is now broadcast by the 91Èȱ¬ is in danger of overkill on our screens, live qualifying, race repeats, etc. SPOTY is so called because it covers all sports, not just the big ones. The Olympics only come round every 4 years and Team GB did particularly well last year which in my opinion justifies the extensive coverage of Olympic and Paralympic sports on SPOTY, a decision vindicated by the fact that Chris Hoy won. 4 years of dedicated training in order to achieve what Team GB did is in my eyes more worthwhile than a rich team that can buy a lot of £30m players winning the European Cup. We hear about this all the time anyway. How about the sports that really aren't covered by SPOTY, Phil Taylor's huge achievements in darts, the snooker, badminton, etc, surely there has to be one occasion per year where sports fans can get equal coverage of their sports without having to take a back seat to the big guns like they usually have to put up with.

"With plenty of big events still to come, there will certainly be plenty more to celebrate and look back on in Sheffield on 13 December."
Ever since the programme was changed from Sports Review of the Year to Sports Personality of the Year it has failed to properly look back on the sporting year.

Oh, can we have SPOTY on Ice! Wouldn't be any more lethal than that ramp last year!

The probelm with SPOTY (love the acronym!!) is that it tends to be a review of sports covered by the 91Èȱ¬ - rather than an alround view of the sporting year. Since the 91Èȱ¬ covers little sport, other than the proscribed events, that cannot be sold to subscription broadcasters, foorball, and perishing F1 - which is now hardly off our screeens - total overkill if you ask me - but then who did?

Outside of an olympic years sports such as swimming, wintersports generally, sailing and the like don't really get a good look in

It would be really good to have an annual show, with 91Èȱ¬, ITV, Setanta, Eurosport GB and Sky all working together to produce a true "UK Sports Personality of the Year" - How about it?

Great news , Mr 91Èȱ¬ Producer, please can you find time in the TV Show to honour Sheila and John Sherwood, both great Olympians of the past. They are both heavily involved in the development of my local tennis club here in Sheffield, Abbeydale Tennis Club. The enthusiasm they both show towards the development of young British players is very inspiring. If not, hope you have a great evening here in Sheffield. Best wishes...

Well if the 91Èȱ¬ was watching the Darts closely on Sky Sports (at the Sheffield Arena) tonight(Thursday), you could have a sneaky peek at how many people are there.
Also can the 91Èȱ¬ tell us which other cities were in the running?

I'd like to support Alliterative Hornets comment and repeat my annual plea for the return of a genuine Sports Review of the Year, possibly separate from the SPOTY if you really think that people can't handle actual sports during a prime time show.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I agree with calls for a genuine sports review of the Year.
Maybe it could be on the Saturday before SPOTY.

When I am watching The show on TV, I couldn't care less in which city the venue is located.

Surely the woman ref on the snooker final isn't the best in the world? She's there becos she's a woman in a man's world. One of your captions describes a Dutchman as the top snooker ref - why isn't he reffing the final? This business of having TOKEN females in macho sports (female rugby presenters etc) isn't equality it's absurdity and an insult to women and to men as it suggests there isn't a man good enough to do the job!!!
Incidentally the woman snooker ref missed a couple of push-shots at the start of the final as you would have noticed!!

nott-hamish - so does this mean that women aren't allowed to enjoy watching sports like rugby because they're 'macho'? You think our poor little brains wouldn't be able to cope? For goodness sake, the prerequisite for commentating on sports, or presenting shows about sport, is surely just being a fan of it. I don't believe those women are 'token' females, I think they're there because they love the sport and are better at their job than their male counterparts (because they have to be, with attitudes like yours!) But hey, if it upsets you that much, maybe we should all just stay at home with our knitting...

PS. Seriously, since when was snooker macho?

I only count Sheffield United as the top football team in sheffield, now if you was to compare Sheffield FC as the oldest club in the world then why not use that fact instead of Sheffield Wednesday ???

Alistair

In terms of featuring more sport during the show this could easily be achieved in the last few years if the elements of the show like Mark Ramprakash dancing, Zak Purchase playing the saxaphone and James Toseland playing the piano hadn't been included.

When you give each of the SPOTY contenders approximately five minutes each in a little feature and it probably takes about 5 minutes to hand out each award you're probably only left with 30 minutes of a 2 hours show to actually review the sporting year so to give over some of that time Sportsmen doing none sporting things does seem like a huge waste to me.

There can really only be one serious contender for SPOTY 2009 - Major Phil Packer, who shows all the humility, dedication, drive and determination to achieve the impossible.
He puts all previous winners to shame.
How do we get him officially nominated - it would be a landslide against the usual collection of over paid under achieving soccer , golf, motor racing, tennis and running prima donnas that the BEEB usually rolls out!.

AT LAST !!!!

Someone is actually DOING SOMETHING to break the metropolitan stranglehold on the 91Èȱ¬ rather than just promising 'jam tomorrow' or 'talking about it'.

Since I whinge on about this all the time, it is only fair that I recognise this huge step forward and applaud this important initiative.

Alex:

What is the reason for the move to Sheffield??? Why SPOTY is moving to Sheffield

=Dennis Junior=

I've got tickets to see SPOTY I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooo excited
Especially as we could have a Sheffield winner in Jessica Ennis