Sheffield Arena, Sun. SPOTY

[Runningman 148]

What a pleasure to have attended Sunday nights event at the Arena. Full marks for a fantastic piece of organisation. Seeing it live and watching the movement of staff organising celebrities and camera positions was an education.

Scanning round with my binoculars was more than interesting, as people from all areas of the sporting world could be seen.

I have just watched a recording of the programme to further appreciate the evening.

Did you go and what did you think ?

Also your opinion please on the following. What is a sports personaliity. Ryan Giggs is one hell of a footballer and his long career is a fantastic achievement, but he isn't a personality ! Has the objective of the programme been lost or did an objective ever exist when one considers some of the past winners.

Jessica has loads of personality and so does David Haye, but hang on it's all down to individual opinions !

[HarryFlint 10]

the opinions of 50 million Man U fans... Giggsy has a lot of fans - far more than anyone else in the list.

[Forumosaurus 10]

Was it free? I thought stuff like this were usually free, I mean the audience are only there to be used to make it more interesting to television viewers, if it wasn't free...well.

 

Not sure why anyone would go out of their way to see it to be fair it seems a bit boring, watching some guy getting an award, but hey ho whatever floats your boat.

[HeadingNorth 11]

As is amply demonstrated every year by the likes of the X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing et al .... anything which is decided by public vote is a competition to decide who the public want to see win the trophy. It isn't based on talent, or deservedness, or results, or anything except who the public want to win.

 

When SPOTY was decided by postcard vote, there was at least the hope that, since filling out a postcard takes a modicum of time, people might invest a modicum of thought into who really deserved to win the thing. Nowadays, you can dial the number in as little time as it takes to think "I like Ryan Giggs." Whether Ryan Giggs has actually achieved anything worthwhile this season is largely an irrelevant matter; peope will vote for who they like, and not for who they consider, after careful thought, to be the most deserving.

 

(I expected Button to win, I wanted Jessica Ennis to win, but I actually voted for Cavendish. He deserved it. Six Tour stages is an outstanding achievement in any year.)

[daftlad 11]

What a pleasure to have attended Sunday nights event at the Arena. Full marks for a fantastic piece of organisation. Seeing it live and watching the movement of staff organising celebrities and camera positions was an education.

Scanning round with my binoculars was more than interesting, as people from all areas of the sporting world could be seen.

I have just watched a recording of the programme to further appreciate the evening.

Did you go and what did you think ?

Also your opinion please on the following. What is a sports personaliity. Ryan Giggs is one hell of a footballer and his long career is a fantastic achievement, but he isn't a personality ! Has the objective of the programme been lost or did an objective ever exist when one considers some of the past winners.

Jessica has loads of personality and so does David Haye, but hang on it's all down to individual opinions !

 

 

 

You are right, he is no personalilty but if memory serves me correctly Nigel Manseel and Stephen Hendry won it and they have even less.

One thing about Giggs though is his dedication to the game, his loyalty to his club and the fact he never is in trouble on or off the field makes him such an outstanding role model

[alchresearch 214]

Yep, congratulations to Sheffield for putting on an excellent show. The winner may have marred things a little, but the event did the city proud.

[dw82 10]

Year after year people still seem to over-analyse the term 'personality'.

 

It doesn't actually mean how much personality someone has ..

it's just a PC term to describe the award - as calling it 'Sportsman of the Year' would be sexist, and 'Sportsperson of the Year' sounds odd and doesn't have the same ring to it.