Overlooked pretty much again. Lumped in with rah-rah for a few seconds.

World road race champion and Tour de France green jersey winner Mark Cavendish has been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The 26-year-old is only the third cyclist to win after Tommy Simpson in 1965 and Sir Chris Hoy in 2008. Cavendish said news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_ ... 303729.stm

World road race champion and Tour de France green jersey winner Mark Cavendish has been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The 26-year-old is only the third cyclist to win after Tommy Simpson in 1965 and Sir Chris Hoy in 2008. Cavendish said news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_ ... 303729.stm

Minimal mention of our game again, I did spot Rob Burrow in the audience I think, but Mark Cavendish, well deserved. Cycling around France for three weeks at the height of summer isnt easy, hopefully he can back it up in 2012 with a road gold at the Olympics.

Isn't it amazing how Sky's opinion of the award has changed from "an overrated awards show" and is now suddenly worthy of coverage after Team Sky's Mark Cavendish has won it.

We get these threads every year about RL being overlooked/ignored on SPOTY as if somehow it's a disgrace and further evidence of bias, etc.

Perhaps if RL was more successful it might actually warrant more exposure and awards? It helps of course if there's a thriving international scene and it might help even more if our best players actually succeed in winning a series or a World Cup against Australia for the first time in 40 years instead of getting flogged. Until the game achieves something worthwhile, it will continue to lack the legitimate right to be worthy of much more than a nanosecond of national exposure and consideration when it comes to dishing out such awards.

Mal Meninga didn't get overlooked in 1990 when he was awarded Overseas SPOTY. And neither did St Helens in 2006 (or coach Daniel Anderson) when they won the team and coach award respectively, courtesy of a successful online Saints supporters campaign to get every man, woman, child and dog to vote as many times as possible

correct, we are a relatively small sport with limited national appeal. unless we do something of national importance we will not receive any major recognition, and correctly so.

Thats pretty much it in a teacup.

Like it or not Rugby Union has a MUCH bigger profile across the whole country and its not all down to media bias as RL fans like to bleat, its more to do with the ruling bodies of the sport all singing off the same hymn sheet and supporting the game (properly) from the under 7s to the national team.

That's a fair point. But until SPOTY improves its coverage of minority sports I'd prefer to give it a miss. Along with most of the BBC's other bland output tailored to appeal to the mainstream.

Don't care.

At least we get a mention and we get decent TV coverage these days. I think our sport gets's the national profile it's distribution and popularity warrant.

Absolutely. Next to the international exploits of our countries biggest sporting obsessions we are really lagging behind.

If coming from 6th in the SL to win their 4th GF from 5 isn't a team performance, god only knows.

England cricket beat an Aus side on a HUGE decline and some other teams (some of which have been jailed for match fixing since)

Go figure.

Not that I'm a massive fan of the show these days, but, cycling would IMO be classed as a minority sport

Best post ever.

"Go figure" is the bit that really won the award for you.

Oh, and just for the record - we finished 5th and England played Pakistan in the summer of 2010. If you going come on and share conspiracy theories at least gets your facts in order first