THERE WAS no boogying the night away or joining drunken party revellers for yours truly on New Year's Eve as they kicked another year into touch and threw in the ball for what hopefully will be a more pallatable 2010.

Instead planted the spanking new Christmas sock covered feet in front of the fire and watched with interest as RTE counted down the top ten in their search to find the greatest Irish sportsperson of all time as chosen by us, the great Irish public.

Of course while in theory giving the sport-loving public the power to choose our strongest, fastest and downright best athletes is a noble idea, you always know there's going to be odd decisions and strange omissions.

All you have to do is look at the current shower leading the country to realise that giving the public their say can't always guarantee the right result.

In case you missed it here's the top ten: 1. Pádraig Harrington, 2. Brian O'Driscoll, 3. Joey Dunlop, 4. George Best, 5. Roy Keane, 6. Seán Kelly, 7. Sonia O'Sullivan, 8. Christy Ring, 9. Vincent O'Brien, 10. Paul McGrath.

Some unquestionably deserve their place, some not, but there's so many reasons why public votes for something like this have to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

For starters most of us couldn't be bothered our backsides in going to the trouble of clicking on our chosen sports star or sending an email to cast our vote - it just seems like too much effort, so basically in reality a very small pool of the population are actually deciding for all of us.

Presenter Aidan Power gave the game away at the start by saying the public voted in their tens of thousands, which basically means it was somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000, most likely to be closer to the former than the latter.

Also people tend to start campaigns to get a star in their sport of choice flying high in the list. Hence Joey Dunlop making the top three.

The late motorcyclist was a true talent and obviously enjoyed a glittering career in his chosen field, but is surely not deserving of a top three spot of all sport stars in the history of the emerald isle.

If you sent people around door to door and asked every person in the country to give their idea of the top Irish sportsperson you'd be sure to get a very different and more probably more accurate outcome.

However the problem would remain that these polls are always going to be time sensitive and very heavily weighted on recent events.

Either the public have very short memories or it's just younger people who bother to vote in these things - oldies barely got a look in with likes the likes of Jack Kyle, Mike Gibson, Barry McGuigan and Ronnie Delany left out in the wilderness.

It's no coincidence that the top two, Pádraig Harrington and Brian O'Driscoll, have enjoyed their biggest successes in recent times.

If dominating your particular sport was the main criteria Seán Kelly would be higher up the list, as would Eamonn Coughlan, who didn't even make the top ten, and Sonia O'Sullivan.

Of course not winning Olympic gold will always go against Coughlan and O'Sullivan but if, like majors in golf, the Olympics were held four times a year that would undoubtedly have won a hat full.

Jockey Tony McCoy is the one glaring omission from the top ten, but we've accepted at this stage that the 14-times champion jockey is probably never going to get the credit he deserves, riding winners day in and day out at places like wet and windy Worcester obviously isn't enough for some.

On another point, Arsenal fans surely won't be too pleased to see Liam Brady miss out on a top ten spot, particularly since three Man United men, Best, Keane and McGrath made the cut, although admittedly the latter played much of his best club football with Aston Villa.

For what it's worth would have Brian O'Driscoll at top spot for his talent and leadership skills, with Harrington in second, so yours truly may also suffer from near-sightedness.

Maybe we should just go back to the old days and stick a panel of suits around a table to come up with the definitive top ten.

Either that our rename the programme 'The most popular Irish sportsperson that we're old enough to remember or could be bothered voting for'. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though.

- Dave Devereux