The Chapman Report (1)

Oct 28, 2025 by Jeremy

In the red corner, Arsenal and England winger Chloe Kelly, Lioness extraordinaire; in the blue (or should it be green?), the pride of Northern Ireland, the challenger Rory McIlroy, now imbued with golfing greatness after achieving in 2025 a long-held goal, the career Grand Slam by winning the Masters.

The fight is on for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, expected to take place on December 16 and, unless you give Lando Norris a shout, it’s a two-horse race. Betfair’s prices say as much: 2.22 Kelly, 3.3 McIlroy (as of October 28).

The heart says Rory in this annus mirabilis when he’s not only completed his Slam – only five had done it before – but led from the front in a rare, away-from-home Ryder Cup triumph under the cosh in New York and will, sure as eggs, rack up a seventh Race To Dubai title as European No. 1 yet again in the next few weeks.

The head says Kelly, the clutch substitute who got off the bench and turned Euro final defeat – 2-0 down with 12 minutes to play – into dramatic victory, and who would become the fifth female winner in a row, and follow close on the heels of two of her fellow Lionesses, Beth Mead and Mary Earps, in an era when Britain has become super-proud of its national women’s football team.

The Euro final got the biggest BBC audience of the year, over 12 million, the four-week competition 22 million. In contrast, just 1.8m saw the last day of the Masters on Sky and 8.8 million watched the Ryder Cup. Translate viewers into potential voters and Kelly, every bit as popular as the two previous WSL champions, has a head start or more.

And where it’s been women versus men in recent years, like Keely Hodgkinson v Luke Littler last time, the ladies have come out on top in a competition flooded with female champions from Princess Anne and Zara Phillips downwards. I’m not saying they didn’t deserve to win but the SPOTY voter has, to say the least, always given them a fair crack of the whip.

Hard as it is to take (at least for this golf lover), Lionesses look to have golfers by the short and curlies as far as BBC voters are concerned. With only two winners in SPOTY’s 70-year history, golf has been treated almost as scurvily as racing.

Only Dai Rees, winning Ryder Cup captain in 1957 ending a run of seven US beatings, most by savage margins in the days before Europe got involved, and Nick Faldo in 1989, the year he won the first of three Green Jackets, have got the voters’ nod and it can’t be in the ultra-charismatic McIlroy’s favour that he’s had great years before and not won (beaten by zero-personality Lewis Hamilton in 2014, the year he won the Open).

So if he is to bridge the 36-year golfing gap since Faldo it will be yet another mighty feat in his mightiest year. Will it happen? I hope so but the big value has gone and 3.3 makes limited appeal.

Of course, with Norris winning another Grand Prix at the weekend and hitting the front in the F1 title race, have we got the wrong end of the stick entirely? Mansell, Damon Hill and Hamilton have each won SPOTY twice and with Kelly and McIlroy on the betting slide and Lando picking up momentum with a perfectly-timed run, stand by for a possible upset.

Voters have short memories and Kelly’s heroics are old news, but Norris has to win the title first – and that’s a long way from a gimme. Plus, F1 isn’t on BBC…

Hannah Hampton could also throw a curveball should the BBC decide to shortlist two Lionesses, potentially splitting that vote, so there’s scope for a few twists and turns yet as we head into the home straight in the liveliest of SPOTY trading years.