The furore over the alleged sexist comments made by Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray about female assistant referee Sian Massey is fully justified.
Their "off-air" comments were recorded before the Wolves v Liverpool game on Saturday and then released by an unnamed source after the match.
The comments reportedly ranged from [Keys]: "Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her" to [Gray]: "Why is there a female linesman? Somebody's ****ed up big" and [Keys]: "I guarantee there will be a big one today. Kenny (Dalglish) will go potty."
In fact, 25-year-old Massey got the "big one" right and it was in Liverpool's favour as Christian Poulsen played the ball through for Raul Meireles who Wolves thought was offside, but was proven by Sky's TV replays to have been kept onside by defender Ronald Zubar. Fernando Torres scored from the ensuing attack.
The kind of outdated sexism voiced by Gray and Keys surely has no place in the Tenties. Society and football have moved on from when Sky started showing live football (as they have pointing out repeatedely in the last few weeks) twenty years ago.
Some years ago pundit and erstwhile manager Ron Atkinson was sacked as an ITV pundit for "off-air" rascist comments, as was (in a non-football context) Carol Thatcher from the BBC.
Will Sky have the courage to follow suit?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
But what a way to end a two-decade long spell; being sacked for speaking privately and unaired to someone else. Talk about loyalty. This reminds me of Sir Paul McCartney being criticised for setting a bad example to the youth of Earth for using drugs- "it's not me telling people what I do; it's you [the media] spreading it across the papers."
ReplyDeleteFair point, Keir. I have a mate who plays football at centre back. He says, "You play 300 games and rarely put a foot wrong. You score one own goal and that's all people can remember."
ReplyDeleteWill ESPN snap up Gray, do you think?