Sports Personality of the Year LIVE: Winners revealed as Mary Earps and Manchester City claim top prizes

It’s a double prize for Manchester City - they are named Team of the Year after their treble, with Pep Guardiola named Coach of the Year. Kyle Walker and Pep Guardiola apologise that they are otherwise engaged.

From one footballer to another, and the great Kenny Dalgish, the winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Alan Hansen presents the trophy to his great mate as Gerry and the Pacemakers play, the pair sharing a warm embrace. He’s joined on stage by his family and a collection of some of his past players and fellow footballing stars.

“I’m very grateful to the BBC, I will treasure this dearly. There are a lot of people to thank. All we did with football is to try and make people happy, and the best way to make people happy is to get results. If they enjoyed us winning, it is a fraction of the enjoyment we got from the support they gave us. It’s not about taking part, it’s about winning for me, and fortunately we were able to do that.”

Quickly on to our next award, and Erling Haaland takes the gong for World Sport Star of the Year from a coterie of sporting superstars.

Haaland thanks those who voted for him after an “incredible” year that saw him fire Manchester City to the treble.

The Helen Rollason Award goes to...Fatima Whitbread, 1987 BBC Sports Personality of the Year after winning javelin gold. She grew up in a series of children’s homes before being adopted by her coach, Margaret.

Whitbread has since campaigned and fundraised for children in care, and is an ambassador for Action for Children.

“This is a very, very special award. Helen was a friend, and I remember her ringing me and asking if I’d be the first international athlete she could interview. I stand here and I am proud and privileged to win this award, but I stand here and represent the care sector, celebrate our young children, the remarkable resilience they show. The children are our future, so if we can invest in them from an early age, it will help decide what and who they become, and indeed society too.

“I’m calling for fundamental change where our children’s today and tomorrow are safer, happier, and healthier, and that they may well reach their potential one day, too.”

The 15 shortlisted contenders are assembled on stage, all doing vital, too often unheralded work in community sport.

And the winner is...Desmond Smith, who set up the Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club - a safe haven for young people which supports five cricket teams and eight junior football sides as well as netball and hockey teams.

And with our sixth and final contender profiled, voting is now open for the 70th BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Half-an-hour of voting to decide our winner.

McIlroy is unable to join Gary Lineker this season, so Tommy Fleetwood has been collared for a chat.

“Rory is amazing,” Fleetwood says of his Ryder Cup playing partner. “I still feel like he is the best player of our generation, the biggest talent. It’s quite an easy job being next to Rory - he sees shots that not a lot of us can hit. At the Ryder Cup, he just showed what he leader he is.”

Into a couple of golfing highlights of 2023, with the Ryder Cup and Rory McIlroy soon in focus, but deserved shine given to Europe’s Solheim Cup heroics in September:

Runners-up in Sydney were the Lionesses, with rock solid goalkeeper Mary Earps right at the heart of their success. The saver of a penalty in that final, Earps joins Alex Scott on stage.

“Football is a bit of a brutal game so it’s really nice to hear those things,” Earps says of some lovely comments from her teammates and Sarina Wiegman. “It’s been an incredible couple of years and I just feel really grateful to have been given an opportunity to fulfil my wildest dreams.

“Goalkeeping is a massive passion of mine and I’m trying to represent a huge group of people, show it can be cool. What I’ve learnt over the last couple of years is you’ve got to show a lot of resilience in life. We all go through hard times, but I think football is a vehicle and we can all change the world in some way.”

And now a look back at what was, in many ways, the centrepiece of the sporting summer, and the Fifa Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, which ended in Spanish triumph.