The Gardeners' World Blog

Thanks for all your comments on the BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year award - and votes for the three contenders.

They are: Europe's victorious Ryder Cup team; Sussex County Cricket Club, who did the County Championship and C&G Trophy double; and St Helens, winner of all three of rugby league's domestic titles.

Voting has now closed and the winner will be announced during Sunday's Sports Personality show, which takes place from 7pm to 9pm on BBC One.

The idea of this blog is that we explain ourselves to the licence-fee payer, and that the replies are one of the means by which you can give us feedback. As you'd expect, not all of it's positive, but it is taken on board.

So I thought it was worth responding to John Phelan's comment last week (#14) which claimed that Match of the Day says "how great the big four are" followed by "a quick whip round the rest". If that was ever true in previous incarnations of BBC or ITV Premiership highlights, I really don't accept it as a description of what we've done since August 2004. On regaining the rights, we introduced a full commentary and minimum five minutes' edit for every game. The intention was not to "whip round" any game ever again!

John also claimed that MOTD is a "load of rubbish" which, if true, is a sad indictment of what our team does for a living. Either way, it may be a "load of rubbish" but I don't agree that it's a big-four obsessed "load of rubbish"! Just ask the fans of Liverpool - presumably one of "the big four" - who've been complaining about our placing of their recent matches in the running order.

In the past, the usual gripe was (with some justification) that certain teams' games often ended up as 30 seconds in the round-up. Now it's that a given edit of several minutes was too late in the running order. However, there is a real issue behind all of this, one which I will now try to address.

We have today announced the top 10 shortlist for this year's Sports Personality of the Year award.

The list of seven sportsmen and three sportswomen, compiled by a combination of votes from the general public, newspaper and magazine editors and a panel of sporting experts, is sure to ignite feverish debate over the next few days.

Voting will only take place during Sunday's show live from 7pm to 9pm on BBC One. The public will be able to vote by phone and text with the numbers announced at the start of the programme.