TIPPING POINT:The controversy over the lack of women nominated for Sports Personality of the Year in Britain gives far too much respect to an utterly pointless award, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

THERE’S AN argument that women demanding equality with men lack ambition. It’s a nice self-deprecatory male line that doesn’t reflect the glass-ceiling reality for females in so many aspects of society. But it isn’t totally flippant. In fact, bear it in mind over the next 10 days as the BBC plugs its telephone voting even more intensely for the Sports Personality Of The Year Award.

There are many aspects of gender politics worthy of indignation. SPOTY – as we are increasingly encouraged to describe it – is not one of them. Certainly the embers of “controversy” that greeted the nomination process of SPOTY are about to get a gleeful blast of publicity oxygen the nearer we get to next week’s ceremony.

You will remember that accusations of disgrace, perfidy and oppression were flung around on the back of there being no woman among the 10 shortlisted names. Great play was made about how the list was drawn up by an overwhelmingly male cast of sports editors and especially how a couple of those were from sad skin magazines read by men for articles whose athletic themes invariably revolve around variations of the “tugathon”.

But, and this is the but that everyone’s righteous indignation has struggled with, SPOTY has about as much to do with sporting achievement as Nuts has to do with The Feminine Mystique. SPOTY is about sporting profile, not ability. It’s not some dastardly male plot. It’s telly, and popularity, and viewing figures. It’s irrelevant to anything real. So, calm down, dears.

Okay, that was a low blow. In fact, now might be a good time for a disclaimer. Dissing SPOTY does not mean this corner is making light of any feminist angst out there. There’s nothing anti-woman here, no underlying misogynistic agenda, no Freudian, bed-wetting resentment of Mummy. You gals are great.

I think Chrissie Wellington is an outstanding athlete. Sarah Stevenson is an example of stoic excellence. Keri-Anne Payne can make her male colleagues look like wimps. And Charlotte Edwards has the sort of leadership skills that would come in handy at Tory HQ now. The thing is, though, I had to look those names up – never heard of them.

They featured among an alternative all-female list of nominees one cross-channel paper worthily put up as a “so there” riposte to those pointy-headed, knuckle-dragging Sports Eds. Wellington is an Ironman champion. Stevenson does Taekwondo. Payne is an “Open” swimmer and Edwards is captain of the England cricket team.

All are no doubt outstanding at what they do. Some boast back-stories that would break your heart in terms of the obstacles they have overcome. They are the epitome of sporting excellence. But in SPOTY terms, they are largely irrelevant, because no one knows who they are. It may be true that a “Personality” contest that has Nigel Mansell in its roll of honour is a contradiction in terms, but at least he had a profile in a sport people watch.

This, of course, brings into play the whole question of how such a profile can be achieved without coverage, a quandary that this newspaper has manfully – oooh, dicey! – tried to come to terms with through its own Sportswoman Of The Year Awards. But that’s about achievement in its purest sense.

The media normally deals in the more prosaic reality of public tastes. And you can’t force-feed people what they don’t want.

Next year’s Olympics will see rare interest in events that for the most part are largely ignored. But it will be the Olympics, sporting broccoli, the stuff you know you’re supposed to appreciate but which for 50 other weeks of the year you’re content to push around the plate while getting stuck into the meat and potatoes of GAA, soccer and a bit of rugby. It might be good for you, but errrr, it’s a bit icky!

There’s no point railing about that. The public really does get what the public wants. Wishing it were otherwise might relieve some stress, but so can a copy of Nuts – I’m told.

The only sport in modern times that has come up out of comparative oblivion into the greater public consciousness has been snooker, and that was due to the advent of colour telly and a cast of almost cartoon-like goodies and baddies. Now that the game has attained a robotic proficiency, viewing figures are dropping fast. People don’t want to watch it anymore. Who won last year’s world championship? Quickly, quickly. No. It was Neil Robertson. Yup, me neither.

The only current snooker players even half known to Joe Public these days are Ronnie O’Sullivan and the Higgins bloke stung by the fake Sheikh. And the reason they have a profile has less to do with their enviable skill at the table and more to do with O’Sullivan’s obvious volatility, not to mention the whiff of sulphur now attached to Higgins’s reputation. And that’s got nothing to do with gender.

The sole woman listed among RTÉ’s nine nominees for their upcoming Sports Personality of the Year award is Katie Taylor, though Fionnuala Britton would surely also figure only for timing.

Interestingly, Taylor has a high profile throughout this country, but if there has been a dramatic upsurge of women’s boxing into the sporting mainstream then it has passed this corner by. Taylor’s profile is due to herself as an individual, and the rarity of her pursuit as much as her talent. And the irrelevance of these awards is that if you offered Taylor the RTÉ bauble or a bye through to the second round of next year’s Olympics, she would take your hand off for the latter.

As for SPOTY being some plot by hirsute, groin-scratching Neanderthal hacks to deny fair maiden her rightful coverage, just keep in mind that any Sports Ed worth their salt would put bear-baiting and cock-fighting (sorry) at the top if it increased viewing/reading figures. And figures are what award shows are all about, especially financial figures coming from the number of telephone votes for the nominees.

How anyone can take seriously a competition that comes down to such a popular vote is hard to fathom. Last year’s winner, Tony McCoy, enjoyed the backing of an entire bloodstock industry who were encouraged to vote en bloc for him. Little wonder then that he romped to victory a lot easier than his Grand National winner Don’t Push It. And even then, there were plenty out there who reckoned Rob Brydon had somehow become Sports Personality Of The Year.

Not pushing the indignation so much looks the best policy this time round. Worthy and all as so many female sporting achievements have been in Britain this year, in terms of the SPOTY context, maybe only the World and Olympic swimming champion Rebecca Adlington has a profile to make her non-inclusion surprising.

Even then, it would be tough on one of the blokes to have lost out to her.

Having a woman on the list purely for the sake of it could be dismissed as tokenism at worst or it might be described as some sort of positive discrimination at best. But positive or negative, it’s still discrimination. And that’s such an ugly word for some pretty ladies.

I’ll start running now.