As for the show in general I think it's got poorer as a review of the year since they extended the nominees list from 6 up to 12. It takes them that long to interview everyone and leave 30 mins for voting and handing out the other awards that the don't really show in better detail the events that happened. Some people I saw complain that apart from Sinfield's interview they didn't really show what happened in the finals but I think that was true of most of the sports. Should extended by 30 mins and show some of the key events in greater detail. It use to have sections for each sport, this year it was just "this happened in Winter, this happened in Spring, this....." Etc.

Every club did and majority of their fans seemingly with of course the minority of bitter childish ones and I see no reason why Leeds wouldn't be the same (including the minority of bitter ones who wouldn't vote).

One thing for a fan to sh*t on the nomination but Rod Studd was showing himself to be the idiot he is once again on his Twitter. The guy gets paid to commentate and touch line report on RL, so even if he disagreed with it surely he could keep him mouth shut for the good of the game rather than criticise the nomination and have a pop at those who campaigned for votes. Bet he didn't sh*t all over Phil Taylor's nomination back in 2009 when he finished 2nd.

Well each to their own I suppose, for those that did thanks, for those that didn't, also thanks.

Don't know where Rod got the idea that it was "A protest vote for RL coverage" from? Bit odd? Where did he get that from?

Whatever Rod. ATEOTD it's not like he even scraped 2nd place is it? he was nearly 200k votes up on 3rd place and in many other years could have won the whole thing. Andy Murray will have had a huge amount of backing from Scottish voters and a bulk of southern middle aged, middle class housewives and last year all the petrol heads got behind Hamilton to get him the win.A bizzare comment from a man supposedly within the game of RL.

He didn't seem happy that people could vote more than once and the multiple voting wasn't right. Thing is I saw something on Twitter that said apparently 50,000 people/phones voted for Sinfield and by ringing multiple times it bumped his total up to 278k.

If that 50k number is correct that would still be enough for 4th place and surely Fury and Ennis-Hill had fans who voted multiple times too. Even if it wasn't on the same scale of the 20 votes = a pint thing, even if their fans voted just twice on average that means less than 40k for those two which again means Sinfield would be 2nd.

I don't see it as being "disloyal" to RL for Rod Studd to express the opinion he did. He's a freelance reporter and commentator, RL is just a small part of his work.

Bit odd that he picked this year to suddenly get uppity about the SPOTY voting system though, which has been open to this kind of widespread abuse and campaign for as long as it's been going. What happened with Sinfield is no different to what happened with others before him, where a whole sport got behind one particular nominee.

Anyone who has seen Studd on BackChat though knows what his MO is. He looks to make outlandish statements to provoke response and debate, often clinging to his point once it's been truly shredded by logic. He's something of a poor man's Stevo in that regard.

As it happens though, I don't agree with multiple votes either. It's a bit hypocritical to complain about things being "rigged", as I've seen others do on these forums, then set about trying to rig it by casting multiple votes for the same nominee. By all means campaign to get the whole of RL behind Sinfield, but the "buy Kev a pint" thing was a farce, and the SPOTY organisers would have been within their rights IMO to withdraw him from the shortlist if they suspected something like that was going on.

It's been done previously as has been referred to in this thread, where the BBC suspected voting fraud going on to get Bob Nudd as the winner so disqualified him from the process.

I voted multiple times because I was allowed to. But I don't agree with it.
What's to say that Murray didn't also receive multiple votes?

Yep, his Mum's facial expression seemed to suggest: "Dream on, RL peasants. My team of ninja telephonists has got this covered..."

In some ways i disagree with multiple votes, but its the same for all candidates. ALso, it enables fans to give some sort of magnitude to their appreciation of the sports star. If you don't have multiple votes, then someone voting for Murray as theyre the only person theyve heard of gets the same voice as someone who has kevin sinfield down as some sort of god. You should be able to express how much you want someone to win

No one called him "disloyal" but it was very stupid and self-centred of himself to air his comments when he's involved in the sport at a media level. It's obvious how big this was for the sport and fans of it so sometimes maybe just hold your tongue especially when he decided to criticise fans of the sport just for the 'crime' of wanting to support the sport they're passionate about.

As for multiple voting, like has been said. All other nominees will have had people vote several times for them so they all could've gotten their person up to Sinfield's total if they cared enough......and that's the key thing. What Sinfield's total says to me is that more people cared about his achievements being rewarded than 10 of the other nominees. If people who voted for the other nominees only voted once then clearly their sporting achievements didn't mean as much to the people who voted for them.

The BBC's agenda was apparent to anyone with half a brain. It could only ever be a Rugby League team that completes a clean sweep of all available trophies, yet doesn't win a single award despite being represented in 3 different categories on the night. The BBC wanted us to crawl back under our stone and keep quiet, whilst yet again pushing Rugby Union to the forefront. How a Rugby Union player won an award on the night when the all conquering Rhinos went empty handed was unbelievable, but you must expect nothing else from the BBC. Dan Carter is undoubtedly a good player, but to shoehorn him in for an award was sick inducing, even by BBC standards. He effectively had to win one game with his team, against Australia, to win the World Cup, yet the likes of Djokovic, who beat the worlds best all year to win multiple tournaments including Grand Slams, is apparently invisible in the "best overseas sportsman category". The BBC is a nauseating company, morally corrupt and not worth a licence fee.

Well, I won't be losing any sleep. A nominee from RL was unique; were it not then I doubt that many of those voters not from Leeds would have bothered and I suspect that many from Leeds wouldn't have voted as many times.

The near-absence of RL from the prog has been nothing other than appalling. List me the other sports who've had representatives listed then tell me there hasn't been a far worse fix of sorts.

I had an interesting Twitter conversation after I happened to Tweet that perhaps British Athletics might be able to get another SPOTY winner if they campaigned more for the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill. Got a reply from someone who turned out to be a Senior Media Officer for British Athletics pointing out how they had tweeted a link of how to vote for the 3 British Athletes.

I did point out the extent of the campaign for Sir Kev (videos, getting other sportsmen involved) and commented that perhaps they could learn a thing or 2.

I suspect the more mainstream the sport, the less they feel they have to galvanize their supporters into voting.

Was Kev's media campaign led by the RFL or the Rhinos?

Whomever did it we could do with a bit more of the same thinking when promoting the sport as a whole.

IIRC the videos with Jonny Wilkinson, Paul Scholes etc were done by Super League TV.

Ladbrokes also piled some of their weight behind it.