Sam Burgess snub for BBC Sports Personality of the Year is a joke....

[josie andrews]

Sam Burgess snub for BBC Sports Personality of the Year is a joke... those who drew up the shortlist don't have a clue!

Sam Burgess signed for Bath after a stellar rugby league career
Burgess helped the South Sydney Rabbitohs to NRL triumph this season

The former Bradford Bull played 80 minutes of Grand Final with fractured cheekbone and eye socket

Rory McIlroy and Lewis Hamilton are favourites from SPOTY shortlist

I’m trying to keep my anger in check so let’s start with the positive.

Rory McIlroy, the world’s No 1 golfer, is on the shortlist and deserves to be after a sensational season. Lewis Hamilton is on it too after exploiting to the full a technically outstanding car to complete a brilliant series of drives which took him to the Formula One championship.

They are joined by Jo Pavey, the mother of two who, aged nearly 41, pulled a beautifully executed tactical race to win the 10,000 metres at athletics’ European Championships in Zurich. Her triumph in August made her the oldest female to win a gold medal in the history of the championships.

The Rabbitohs legend will make his first start for Bath at inside centre against Montpellier on Saturday

What a story – so good, in fact, that Pavey, along with McIlroy and Hamilton, have been rightly recognised as proper candidates for the Sports Personality of the Year award which will be announced on BBC 1 on Sunday evening.

But as for the remaining seven on the shortlist – do me a favour! I just can’t believe that one of sport’s outstanding players can’t even make the top 10.

I’m talking about Sam Burgess, rugby league player supreme and now, having decided to switch codes, destined to be a major figure if England are to have any chance of winning rugby union’s World Cup next year.

Golf star Rory McIlory (left) and British Formula One hero Lewis Hamilton have both made the shortlist

BBC SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR, NOMINEES (2014)
Lewis Hamilton (Formula One)
Rory McIlroy (Golf)
Charlotte Dujardin (Dressage)
Charlotte Evans (Skiing)
Carl Froch (Boxing)
Kelly Gallagher (Skiing)
Max Whitlock (Gymnastics)
Adam Peaty (Swimming)
Gareth Bale (Football)
Lizzy Yarnold (Skeleton racing)
Jo Pavey (Running)

I know Burgess has been playing in Australia for four years and only recently returned to this country by signing for Bath. But he was an awesome teenager for Bradford Bulls and made his international debut when only 19.

South Sydney Rabbitohs recognised Burgess’s supreme talents and co-owner and acting superstar Russell Crowe persuaded Burgess to choose his club as the battle to secure his signature hotted up.

He had an outstanding four years for the Rabbitohs and earned a reputation as teak tough, a no-nonsense forward whose ball handling skills put him up there with the best sportsmen and women in the world.

His final game in Australia makes him a sporting icon, a legend, a hero all rolled into one.

For those unfamiliar with this instance of sporting greatness, a little recap. The South Sydney Rabbitohs played Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in the 2014 NRL Grand Final and in the very first tackle of the game Burgess fractured a cheekbone and an eye socket.

Despite the pain, Burgess in an extreme act of selflessness played on, not wanting to let his team-mates down. He was in supreme form in the game, which his side won, and he was awarded the Clive Churchill Medal for best player in the grand final - the first South Sydney player to claim the medal in 43 years.

Burgess has also made the shortlist for the coveted Golden Boot Award. The award is given to the player deemed to have been the best in the world that season. Burgess could become the third British player to receive the award since it was restarted in 1999, following in the footsteps of Kevin Sinfield (2012) and Andy Farrell (2004).

What more does a player have to do get his talent recognised in his home country?
I simply cannot believe that the panel that compiled the shortlist — including Olympians Rebecca Adlington and Denise Lewis, Paralympian Baroness Tanni-Grey Thompson and footballer Jason Roberts (quite how he ranks with the first three goodness only knows!) plus BBC bigwigs I’ve never heard of — can ignore one of the great British sporting heroes.

So when the Great British Viewing Public are sitting by their televisions on Sunday evening and the counts come in for the shortlist also-rans like dressage’s Charlotte Dujardin (unless the horsey brigade get behind her!), breaststroke swimmer Adam Peaty and boxer Carl Froch, spare a thought for one man whose talent has been totally ignored.

How can it possibly be Sports Personality of the Year when the one sportsman who oozes bravery and talent in equal measure doesn’t even make the shortlist?

Stand up, Sam Burgess — you’re my SPOTY winner! The shortlist compilers and the Great British Viewing Public don’t have a clue.





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyu ... -clue.html

[medlocke]

He didn't do it over here though did he

[cow yeds]

It's all in the title BBC SPORTS PERSONALITY.

[menpond]

Once we took the Sky money a good thing we ceased to exist with the British Establishment,and with a guaranteed 3billion sterling pa to spend,and no oversight,BBC is the nearest thing to the old SOVIET POLTIBURO on this earth.

[sc74]

Might be the nearest thing, in your opinion, but it's still millions of miles away. Not sure they are making many government policies. Wasting money hand over foot, yes.

[cpwigan]

Not so much a non BBC sport rather a sport that is deemed the wrong class and not deemed worthy by the BBC decision makers.

SPOTY became a farce from the year angler Bob Nudd won the award only to force the BBC to create new rules to avoid anybody not deemed acceptable by the BBC winning the award.

[Mike]

Once we took the Sky money a good thing we ceased to exist with the British Establishment,and with a guaranteed 3billion sterling pa to spend,and no oversight,BBC is the nearest thing to the old SOVIET POLTIBURO on this earth.

Not the Chinese or North Korean politburos then?

[Green Machine]

I'm pretty sure Medlocke that Hamilton nor most of the others didn't "do it over here" either.

[Green Machine]

Was he not entitled to win overseas award?

[Owd Codger]

Like I suspect many other Rugby League Supporters, I stopped watching it from the year there was not one mention of our game on it.

The event has now become a farce and has never been the same since Sky Sports came on the scene.

And are the winners of what is now now a money making event held in large arena's actually chosen by the public or the powers that be within the BBC?