Snooker news - Beam me up, SPOTY: Why Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Williams both deserve top award

Better late than never. According to bookmakers, Ronnie O’Sullivan is a 14-1 shot to win the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year for the first time on Sunday night. At last, as Etta, not Steve James, once warbled.

Every December the BBC Sport’s Personality of the Year awards rolls around. And every year the gregarious, ongoing and outgoing O’Sullivan is ignored.

It has become a hoarier old tale of Christmas than Ebenezer Scrooge. “Bah! Humbug!” comes the silent refrain, more telling than a Steve Davis safety shot, from Auntie’s shortlisting panel in continuing to shun snooker's main protagonist.

Yet there is even time for the Beeb to repent if you keep asking why the same errors are continually made in disgracefully excluding the game's greatest player from the annual, largely overhyped jamboree.

It would be the first time O’Sullivan, man and boy, has been selected for the BBC’s big bash since he turned professional in 1992. Davis was the first and only snooker player to win SPOTY in 1988, while fellow multiple world champion Stephen Hendry, was the last player to be nominated for the gong behind Gazza in 1990.

After years of being left snookered behind the formidable TV focaccia of the Hairy Bikers, Antiques Road Trip, Eggheads and even Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em on BBC2, a place on SPOTY would put the green baize back on BBC1 prime time for the first time since Jim Davidson last hosted Big Break. A year after O'Sullivan lifted his first world title in 2001.

For a deadly serious sport that often makes way for light entertainment programmes at 6pm during a typically taut final frame at the World Championship, this is quite something.

That O’Sullivan should be nominated is not in dispute. Why he has never won the award is a bigger farce, bordering on an obvious disdain, ignorance and snobbery towards a sport that the Essex geezer not only plays, but performs.

Particularly when he returned from a year away from the madding crowd to claim a fifth world title in 2013 a year after lifting his fourth. It seemed like his day would never come, but with the BBC announcing the shortlist on the night, the odds would suggest that there will be a number to dial up for O'Sullivan.

Which can be a good or bad thing when you consider the British public preferred Rita Simons to Noel Edmonds on I’m A Celebrity.

In a popularity contest, O’Sullivan is admired for his ability, but more so for his no-frills persona and his tumultuous back story.

He declared himself the "people's player" when lifting the UK title for a record seventh time on Sunday night, but has been the people’s champion since Alex Higgins died in 2010,

When I asked him about being snubbed at the same juncture a year ago, O’Sullivan said: "I think they should ignore the sport. I'm so happy I don't get nominated. I've never been, and I would never want to go.

Well, there is nothing like flattery to get the boys back on the baize. All roads lead to Birmingham’s Genting Arena on Sunday evening. Could O’Sullivan win? Unlikely set against Harry Kane, Lewis Hamilton, Geraint Thomas or Tyson Fury.

But he could feature heavily in a phone vote. World darts champion Phil Taylor finished second after being recognised by the panel eight years ago.

O’Sullivan deserves to be among the nominees, but the same could be said several times in the past. Starting in his second season as a professional when he defeated Hendry to win the first of his seven UK Championships at the age of 17 in 1993.

Conversely, if you were opting for one snooker player to earn a nomination for his achievements in 2018, it would surely be Mark Williams. Williams is a figure who turned professional in the same year as O’Sullivan, as part of the class of '92 alongside John Higgins.

Williams was a man who was so far out of the reckoning that he failed to qualify for the World Championship in 2017.

On the brink of retiring from the game, Williams reworked his technique to recover a gait that had been badly wounded.

Having won the Northern Ireland Open in the death throes of 2017, he lifted the German Masters and the World Championship at the age of 43 for a third time in May.

Astonishing when one considers Williams won his first two world titles in 2000 and 2003, and was seemingly in terminal decline.

He is also a terrific personality after keeping a promise to appear naked in the press conference after claiming the world crown such was his state of disbelief.

Throw in a World Open win in August, and a few well-publicised benders, and it is clear why Williams has earned his place on any podium. Beam me up SPOTY. If Williams has been overlooked, it is a dreadfully poor decision, but one partly borne out of a historical lack of respect towards snooker.

They can't overlook O'Sullivan as the game's big draw ahead of Williams. Even if the main narrative of the year in snooker has come via the Welshman.

Most members of the public will recognise O’Sullivan. Some might also mention Alex Higgins, Steve Davis and Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White if they think long and hard about yesteryear.

Which sounds like no bad thing until you consider that of the last three names, one is dead, one has retired and the other one is only playing after being granted special privileges.

Apart from O’Sullivan, it is debatable if anybody would recognise any current members of the top 10 of the game. When once Davis spent more time on UK TV than Margaret Thatcher, nowadays Nigel Farage spends more time on terrestrial TV than O’Sullivan.

But a nomination for the Rocket would also represent recognition of snooker's lift-off in recent times.

The return of snooker to SPOTY marks the renaissance of a sport many feared passing away a decade ago. But as the evergreen O'Sullivan demonstrates, his labour of love is in rude health.