UN election monitors to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ballot, please, as a load of guys simply cannot accept that England goalkeeper Mary Earps won the prize in a public vote. Did these guys vote in the poll? Don’t be stupid. Did they pass comment about the chaotic general election taking place this very week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where millions are starving and lead lives under permanent threat of extreme violence? One of the candidates, the Nobel peace laureate Denis Mukwege, declared that the “electoral fraud of the century” was currently taking place. In which case, I guess Denis didn’t hear about what went down at Spoty on Tuesday night.
In terms of what did actually happen, it wasn’t hugely complicated, so you’d hope the election monitors would be done and dusted in time to proceed to the DRC. Mary Earps, England and Manchester United keeper, was voted Sports Personality of the Year in the annual BBC contest. That personality in the title is often misunderstood – it’s the old-fashioned word for a well-known person. The award is not an award for personality: Nigel Mansell won it twice. Notably, though, Earps does actually have a personality in that modern sense – she has become hugely popular, despite England’s agonising loss to Spain in the World Cup final, with a big TikTok presence and a whole generation of young girl players looking up to her. Furthermore, a number of women of all ages felt her on-pitch persona simply spoke to them – specifically the famous bit where she saved a penalty kick to keep England in the final, and glossed the moment with an eminently lip-readable “FUCKING YES! FUCK OFF!”
