Sports awards are supposed to be a bit of fun. However, at the end of each year, we look back on how our sports people performed and we, as sports watchers, angrily argue about which of their performances merit even more accolades. It’s not enough for our best runners, footballers, hurlers, rowers, boxers and more to beat the their opponents, they have to fight each other for our sofa-based approval too.
Therein lies the problem. It is impossible to compare someone winning a golf major to another winning an All-Ireland winners’ medal, a team earning qualification for their world cup to a duo winning gold in the Paralympics, a man who’s coached his athlete to a world championship to a woman who’s led her team to national glory etc. They’re all deserving, but how can we make the comparisons fairer? We’re here to help, and the answer is more categories.
Most countries around Europe have a similar awards show to the RTE Sports Awards. Each broadcaster creates their own criteria (eg separate awards for men/women/international/domestic) and there’s no reason why Ireland and RTE can’t split the current big 3 awards (Sports Person, Team and Manager of the Year into 7 (seven) different categories for a fairer, more balanced awards show. Let’s have a look at the new awards.
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Individual Sports Person of the Year
This category is limited to those athletes who compete on their own. We’re looking at track and field athletes, golfers, rowers (single sculls only), swimmers, boxers, cyclists, gymnasts etc. Although some of these compete in teams some of the time, their achievements are mostly based on their individual performances. So, this rules out the RTE award winners for 2024, 2021, 2018, 2017 and more for what that’s worth. In 2025 this would rule out the nominations received by David Clifford, Katie McCabe and Troy Parrott. It takes a certain type of person to train their whole life to compete on their own, and this should be acknowledged.
Our 2025 winner would be Rory McIlroy. Four tournament wins this year including the Players’ Championship, the Irish Open and, of course, the Masters to complete his career grand slam.
13 April 2025; Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland celebrates on the 18th green after winning his playoff during the final round of the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, USA. Photo by Kyle Terada/Imagn Images via Sportsfile
Team Sports Person of the Year
This new category is for members of sports teams that excel individually but who’s achievements are earned as members of a team, crew or duo. In the last 6 years we’ve seen nominees from Gaelic football, hurling, camogie, rugby, soccer, hockey, cycling, rowing and, here’s where we may get controversial, horse racing. Do you know that we’ve never had an RTE Sports Person of the Year from the Gaelic games? We have had soccer and rugby players win though, and we have had multiple jockeys win. Our argument is that the jockeys’ achievements have as much to do with the actions of the horses, as their own. So, they’re going to be treated as a duo. The same would apply to show jumping, eventing and any other equestrian events. Last year’s winner Paul O’Donovan would fit in here, as would other members of rowing crews.
Our 2025 winner is Katie McCabe, the first Irish woman to the UEFA Women’s Champions League (Emma Byrne, Ciara Grant and Yvonne Tracy did win the previous UEFA Women’s Cup in 2007 though).
24 May 2025; Katie McCabe of Arsenal celebrates with the UEFA Women’s Champions League trophy after the Champions League final match between Arsenal and Barcelona at Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo by Daniela Porcelli /Sportsfile
Para-Sports Person of the Year
It’s time for para-athletes to have their own award. Most years RTE have nominated one, sometimes two, para athlete for the main award and the optics of that make some believe that the nomination is tokenistic. It shouldn’t be, and an award for our para-sports stars is overdue. Unlike the last two awards, we’d allow pairs here. Katie-George Dunlevy and Linda Kelly won the Team of the Year award in 2024, while Dunlevy (not Kelly) was also nominated for the individual award. There is no sense in breaking any of our pilot/para-cyclists tandems up so they can be one nomination for this category. The same applies to pairs and doubles in para-rowing and other sports. We’ve reached a point where Ireland could nominate 5-6 para-athletes every year with only those who’ve won medals at European or World level included. Across several sports, we have world class para-athletes so let’s showcase that.
Our 2005 winner is Orla Comerford, who won two gold medals at the World Championships in a busy year that saw her compete in Diamond League events across the athletics circuit.
1 October 2025; Orla Comerford of Ireland celebrates with her gold medals from the T13 100m and T13 200m events on day six of the New Delhi 2025 World Para Athletics Championships at JLN Stadium in New Delhi, India. Photo by Nikola Krstic/Sportsfile
Team Sports Team Of The Year
The current Team of the Year award is the messiest award that RTE hands out each year. They nominate the winners of the All-Ireland championship in Gaelic football (men’s and women’s), hurling and camogie and the winners of the League of Ireland every year. Some years there might be only one more nomination, other years will have a dozen teams or duos in the mix. Some “teams” that have received nominations in the past ten years include “Ireland’s Paralympic athletes”, “Irish Women’s European Boxing Team” and “Special Olympics Team”. As you see, the criteria can be as loose as they wish.
With that in mind, we’re going to limit the “Team Sports Team of the Year” to sports that compete *only* as teams: football, rugby, camogie, hockey, cricket, basketball, etc. You get the picture. We’d try and limit the number of teams for each sport here to try and get away from the token nominations for all four Gaelic sports winners, as well as the LOI winners. In 2016 there were 4 nominations from Gaelic games, 3 from soccer and 2 from rugby. It looked like the panel didn’t want to offend anybody by leaving them out. They all lost to 2 rowers.
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Our 2025 team of the year is Shamrock Rovers. They won the League and FAI Cup for their first domestic double in nearly 40 years and became the first club from Ireland to qualify for European group stage football without the head start of starting in the Champions League.
9 November 2025; Shamrock Rovers players John McGovern, left, and Danny Grant celebrates with the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division trophy and FAI Cup after the 2025 Sports Direct Men’s FAI Cup Final match between Shamrock Rovers and Cork City at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Michael P Ryan/Sportsfile
Mixed Sports Team of the Year
We might have to workshop that title, but it will be an award for teams, crews, doubles and pairs in sports that can be competed in individually. Here’s where our rowing crews, our relay or cross country squads in athletics, our showjumping or eventing national teams, our sailing crews etc get to shine. Ireland repeats its famous run to the final of the 2019 World Cup of Darts? They’d be recognised here. The Northern Ireland team that won it in 2025? They’d have to be asked would they want it first. (Previous nominees include the Northern Ireland football team – Michael O’Neill won Manager of the year for his success with NI too fwiw).
As mentioned above, in the past they have lumped individual competitors into teams to reward overall good showings, but we’d try and steer clear of these too. While the boxing squad may have great camaraderie, they enter into bouts as individuals, and we’d treat them as such.
Our 2025 winners are the Irish three day eventing team of Padraig McCarthy, Robbie Kearns, Aoife Clark and Ian Cassells who won silver at the European championships. It’s the first time since 1995 that Ireland have been on the podium at the Europeans.
6 December 2025; PD Horse Sport Ireland eventing team Dag Albert, far left, with the Eventing Team members and nominees for Team of the Year, sponsored by Flogas, from left, Padraig McCarthy, Aoife Clark, Ian Cassells and Robbie Kearns during the Team Ireland Olympic Sport Awards 2025 at The Royal Convention Centre in Dublin. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
Manager of the Year
This is another category with automatic nominations for the 4 All-Ireland winning Gaelic games teams and the manager of the League of Ireland champions. As with the Team of the Year, we’d try and limit this number to only include the very best. Unlike the athlete awards, the Manager of the Year can be an Irish person working abroad or at home, or a non-Irish person working in Ireland. We’ve had winners from Italy, New Zealand, Netherlands and England. This policy would continue. We’d keep horse racing trainers in here too, because they don’t really fit in anywhere else.
Our 2025 winner is Liam Cahill, who guided Tipperary to the All Ireland Hurling Championship in stunning fashion.
20 July 2025; Tipperary manager Liam Cahill celebrates with the Liam MacCarthy cup after their side’s victory in the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Cork and Tipperary at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Coach of the Year
This is a new award. The Manager of the Year has been open to coaches, and several have got nominated but it’s hard to compare someone coaching an athlete, boxer, swimmer or gymnast to the manager of a club, county or national team. For this reason, we’d introduce a Coach of the Year award. It seems churlish that in 2024, when Ireland had its most successful Olympics of all time, that not a single coach from the Olympic sports was included in the managerial short list. Previous nominees include Dominic Casey (rowing) and Zaur Antia (boxing) but we have to find space to recognise the work done in all the individual sports where a coach may only work with one or two star athletes, but they can bring out the best in them.
Our 2025 winner is Michael O’Connor, coach and father of Kate O’Connor. Kate had a busy year in 2025 with medals in the European Indoors, World Indoors, World University Games and then finally, she became only the 6th Irish athlete to win a medal at the outdoor World Athletics Championships with silver in the heptathlon. Michael was recently awarded the World Athletics Coaching Achievement Award for 2005.
21 September 2025; Kate O’Connor of Ireland poses for a portrait with her father and coach Michael and her women’s heptathlon silver medal during day nine of the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 2025 at Kabukicho in Tokyo, Japan. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
Young Sports Star of the Year
Our eighth and final award would go unchanged. The last 3 winners have been from team sports, individual sports and para-sports. There’s no sense of auto-nominations here and there’s always a good spread of men and women. In many ways, the Young award is the category that RTE has fine tuned and got spot on. From 3 nominations in 2017 to 13 nods the following year, they’ve been a tight 5/6 since 2020.
Our 2025 winner is swimming’s John Shortt. Winning gold medals at the European and World Junior Championships this year would have been enough for the Galway teenager to win this award, but he finished 2025 with gold in the (senior) European Short Course championships. In the process, he became the first Irish swimmer to ever break a world junior record.
12 December 2025; John Shortt of Bluefin Swim Team after setting a new junior and Irish record in the men’s 200m individual medley final during day one of the Irish Winter Swimming Championships 2025 at the National Aquatic Centre on the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. Photo by Tyler Miller/Sportsfile
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The tightness of the nominations process would be key for these new awards. The TV broadcast can talk about every great moment in Irish sport each year, but with 8 categories, there should only be 5 or 6 nominations each year. The judging panel should be made earn their free dinner by actively seeking out the best athletes, players, teams, duos, managers and coaches. It is still hard to compare sports and sporting achievements, but with stronger guidelines and clearer categories, we can celebrate the best of the best in a new, and we think improved, format. It shouldn’t devalue the awards because, remember, it’s supposed to be fun. They’ve already achieved their sporting ambitions, this is just a TV show with some talking points for us viewers.
If you read this, decision makers in RTE sports, we are available to consult.
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