Come month-end, Bermudians will have a second say in who gets into the Sports Hall of Fame first.

That's when the public will be presented with a list of nominees and asked to rank them. This second wave of consultation with the community follows a recent campaign by the Board overseeing the Hall to encourage nominations from Bermudians for the inaugural inductees.

"So it's not just going to be the number of nominations a person gets. We'll say `Here are the nominees. Help us with this rating'. It will be easier for the public to get that back to us because they're not required to think up the names this time," said Chairman of the Board Rick Richardson.

"When the Board gets those back we will begin our deliberations - if need be with additional research on some of the names submitted when it gets down to the wire."

Data from about 300 forms is now being compiled and computerised before the Board seeks the public's second tier of input.

Richardson explained that though 300-odd forms were submitted, he did not know the exact number of nominations because some forms had multiple nominations.

"Some of them had as many as five or more names," he told The Royal Gazette. "We went through those forms to get an idea of how people had filled them out and whether they had given sufficient information on the people they were recommending.

"We still have a huge batch of forms which we haven't gone through and we're going to meet again tomorrow (today) and do a more thorough job. But last week we were just getting some idea of the public's response. It was exceptional."

Richardson disclosed that about a dozen "familiar names" were already quite prevalent in terms of the number of nominations received. These include W.F. (Chummy) Hayward, Alma (Champ) Hunt, Francis (Goose) Gosling, Clyde Best, Carlton (Pepe) Dill and Dr. Gerard Bean.