Andy Gray and Richard Keys....

[drew]

Lawro is class!

I think that comment negates any right you have to pass judgement on football in any shape or form!!!!!


As for this issue. They are a couple of morons. They know there is a likelihood of microphones being on (remember Ron Atkinson). I very much suspect that Sky will hang them out to dry. Not because Sky is an upstanding example of equality (you don't see an ugly old female news or sports presenter on the channel) but just because it will be opportunistic in offloading a couple of overpaid dinosaurs and replacing them with younger cheaper models. It doesn't matter who presents the show because people don't watch it because of them. They watch it because it is exclusively on Sky.

 

[The Peanut Roaster]

I don't understand why people think this is about sexism.

It's not even as if she's fit.

 

[Ninja Elephant]

It doesn't matter who presents the show because people don't watch it because of them. They watch it because it is exclusively on Sky.

I disagree with that, I like both Richard Keys and Andy Gray and I would honestly say they are a big part in why I watch The Final Word, and MNF when it is on. I think the show tonight won't be the same without them. Like them or not, as a lot of people on here don't seem to, they present an interesting show and talk about all the current issues.

 

[Buck]

Who knows what impact this will have on Sian Massey's career too, because whatever happens now, her next game is going to be so under the spotlight, any tiny error will be magnified a million times and used against her by some people. She'll face abuse from the crowd (I agree she probably gets some anyway based on her gender), some intended in jest, which I'm sure she'll be used to, but others more vitriolic. Why should she put up with that? If she screws up, she screws up, like any other lino, but she doesn't deserve to be targeted because she wears a skirt. Probably.

Only because this has been blown completely out of proportion!!

If it wasn't mentioned then all would have agreed she had a good game and that would have been the end of it.

All linesmen/women/officials get abuse from the crowd, always have and always will. Absolutely nothing to do with it being a woman. If she expects different she shouldn't be doing it in the first place

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

This is all very well but the most important question is:

WOULD YOU?

 

[Was not Was]

afraid I don't have time to trawl through all ten pages, but the comments I've seen don't mention the impact this sort of thing has on colleagues. Can you imagine how you'd feel as a woman working at Sky, if this crap goes unpunished? I was really shocked last week when my missus told me about some of the sexist nonsense going on in her industry; I had no idea there were still people who think this stuff is acceptable.

Presumably they either think that women aren't demoralised by being referred to like this, or they just don't think about their co-workers.

 

[oldham gull]

Dear Sky Sports..... up on this blog if anyone is interested!
Falling With Style

 

[Lady Whistledown]

All linesmen/women/officials get abuse from the crowd, always have and always will. Absolutely nothing to do with it being a woman. If she expects different she shouldn't be doing it in the first place

It's fair game in my opinion to have a go at her because of a (perceived) mistake she makes, I have no problem with that, it's always been a part of football. What she doesn't deserve is for her gender to be made an issue, because any f*** up she makes is NOTHING to do with being a woman, it would be human error, no more, no less. This issue has arisen because she has been slated before the game has even started due to the fact that pair of idiots are already assuming she is going to ruin a game of football BECAUSE she is female.

It would be despicable for a black linesman (say) to have his colour used as a factor if he made a wrong call, or for someone to say he has no place in the game. I would take an educated guess that you are a white male yourself, therefore are unlikely to have ever experienced someone questioning your ability to do a job based on your colour and/or gender. Unfortunately it does still go on, and it causes great upset, which you don't seem to be able to understand. If the likes of Gray and Keys think like that, the odds are there are plenty of employers around the world who operate in the same way. It would piss me the hell off if someone ever questioned my ability to do the job I am qualified, trained and paid to do, simply because I am a woman.

(And everyone already DOES agree she had a good game, that's not in doubt)

 

[Buck]

This is all very well but the most important question is:

WOULD YOU?

Hmmmmm not sure. Think I'd have to know a lot more about her personality, sense of humour and hobbies!!

Being a football official I'd imagine she's a bit of a control freak and probably quite dominating.

 

[SeagullRic]

Whilst I (think) I agree with your sentiment, I really would check your own use of our beautiful language, before slagging off someone else's!

Oops

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Excellent opinion on this subject from the immensely readable Paul Hayward, Guardian sports columnist (and, I believe, staunch Albion fan)

Fronting their hyped intergalactic Sunday showdowns, Richard Keys and Andy Gray are products of modern television's habit of recasting broadcasters as "personalities", celebrities, players in the great drama on field and screen. With this power, often, comes an arrogance and an inability to size up the world outside the studio.

On the circuit the two suspended Sky comperes are a tight double act. In the football media Gray is quite open about his disregard for anyone who "hasn't played the game" but will at least say hello and talk over a drink. He radiates the frustrated energy of the ex-pro and wears the look of a man who sometimes struggles to control his passions.

Keys, supposedly the professional journalist of the two, is unrelentingly aloof, as if to talk to print reporters might lower the wattage of his fame. He affects the air of a TV star who has become an extension of the game he is meant to be presenting and describing. As the temperature rose after Sunday's exposé it was left to his sister to come on the airwaves and say, in effect, that Keys is not sexist and that some of his best friends are women. He even has some in his family.

Television does this to people. It raises them to a plane of imagined grandeur. What has this to do with the pair insulting Sian Massey, the assistant referee at the Wolves-Liverpool match, in a leaked exchange that arrives while Gray is suing Rupert Murdoch's News of the World over the phone tapping scandal? The point is that if either has a warning siren in his head alerting him to the folly of parading stupid prejudices at work then it has been knocked out of service by a life in football and TV.

Gray and Keys, who are unpopular with many viewers, and are often suspected of not understanding the offside rule, if the public reaction to this brouhaha is any guide, are the two main faces of a brilliant service. Sky's football coverage is symbiotically linked to the growth of the Premier League: first in the money Murdoch's empire pitchforks into the top division but also in the breadth and vibrancy of its programming.

But by mistaking a live television show for the clubhouse at an especially backward golf club they have presented their employers with a mighty PR calamity. A light is now cast on the amazing and presumably coincidental prevalence of attractive young women presenters on Sky Sports News, and the presence of Charlotte Jackson, say, to read out the scores on Champions Leagues nights, like one of Bruce Forsyth's assistants from the 1970s.

Had Gray and Keys been eager to resign, they might have pointed out some of these anomalies on the way to the car park. Sky on the other hand would spell out the difference between hiring women for their looks (which conversely means not hiring other women, for their looks) and Keys saying, to Gray, about Massey: "Well, somebody better get down there and explain offside to her."

Both are guilty of risible chauvinism. But the extra sting is that Massey was required to make a highly marginal offside decision for Liverpool's second goal and called it right. Grumbling away as they might in a bar, Gray and Keys appeared to think a man who has not played professional football might make a correct offside call, while a woman who has not played professional football is denied that capability at birth.

This is partly another object lesson in the difference between what people in public life say to the world and the things they think in private. These double standards are built into society. Usually, television's front-men are sufficiently aware (or calculating) to suppress ugly thoughts before they reach the mouth.

At the risk of offending all footballers from his era, Gray brought something of the old dressing-room myopia to his incorrect appraisal of Massey's work: a kind of worn-out misogyny. He might have learned from Ron Atkinson's racist outburst that the mic is never really off. Keys, all oiled and polished, has reached such a stage of self-inflation that even the self-protecting part of his broadcasting brain has shut down.

"The game's gone mad," he said. There are many sound reasons for saying "the game's gone mad": obscene wages, outrageous ticket prices, the Portsmouth scandal, leveraged buy-outs, diving. Here, the game had gone mad because a woman was going about her work and going about it well.

However deeply Gray and Keys held those views before Sky gave them jobs they were bound to be made worse by the blokeish culture they constructed around themselves. They detached themselves from the basic rules of their profession, perhaps because they thought they were too big for the code to apply to them, and will pay the price now every time they encounter a female colleague, or a woman in football: a narrow world that pretends to be inclusive.

"See charming Karren Brady this morning complaining about sexism?" Keys asks. "Yeah. Do me a favour, love." There is another TV character who would have killed for that line: Alan Partridge.

 

[Giraffe]

Just catching up with this story.

My question would be how many people in the crowd at the stadium would have either thought or said something similar. And given that I think it would be an awful lot why are they all not being slaughtered. Only difference is the mikes.

Football is a sexist environment, those reporting on it just reflect this.

Surely there are more important things to discuss in our world than this.

 

[Buck]

It's fair game in my opinion to have a go at her because of a (perceived) mistake she makes, I have no problem with that, it's always been a part of football. What she doesn't deserve is for her gender to be made an issue, because any f*** up she makes is NOTHING to do with being a woman, it would be human error, no more, no less. This issue has arisen because she has been slated before the game has even started due to the fact that pair of idiots are already assuming she is going to ruin a game of football BECAUSE she is female.

It would be despicable for a black linesman (say) to have his colour used as a factor if he made a wrong call, or for someone to say he has no place in the game. I would take an educated guess that you are a white male yourself, therefore are unlikely to have ever experienced someone questioning your ability to do a job based on your colour and/or gender. Unfortunately it does still go on, and it causes great upset, which you don't seem to be able to understand. If the likes of Gray and Keys think like that, the odds are there are plenty of employers around the world who operate in the same way. It would piss me the hell off if someone ever questioned my ability to do the job I am qualified, trained and paid to do, simply because I am a woman.

(And everyone already DOES agree she had a good game, that's not in doubt)

My avatar does actually give away the fact that I am a white male so not that much of an educated guess!!

However, you are jumping to the same stereotype presumptions that you claim to despise. I was born with a disability and have at times felt it could prejudice opinions and opportunities. What has that taught me? Believe in your own ability and don't worry too much about what others think of you.

To suggest that this woman will suddenly wilt away because of this incident or that it will affect her performances is, quite frankly, insulting to her. I'm sure she is made of far stronger stuff than that to get where she has to so far.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Just catching up with this story.

My question would be how many people in the crowd at the stadium would have either thought or said something similar. And given that I think it would be an awful lot why are they all not being slaughtered. Only difference is the mikes. True, but those people are not paid a fortune to broadcast their opinions to millions of Sky viewers, including- shock!- women. They have screwed up, big time, and they should be man enough (no pun intended) to take what's coming to them

Football is a sexist environment, those reporting on it just reflect this. That doesn't make it OK though or that we should just accept it and never try to change it

Surely there are more important things to discuss in our world than this. Clearly, but there are more important things than the Albion, the World's Hardest Creature Awards, Glenn Murray's new contract, but it doesn't stop us all discussing them at length on here

...

 

[clippedgull]

...

You are correct of course. Why don't the police take action over homophobic chants at Withdean? It doesn't offend me, but people may be offended.

Not a dig at the police, just an observation.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Edna, I'm totally with you on this.

Great article from Paul Hayward, a bloke right up there with Martin Samuel as a top, top journo. It's interesting Hayward drew a parallel with Partridge, much as I did earlier in this thread. The similarities are striking - I can easily imagine Coogan scripting those lines for Partridge in an outtake from The Day Today.

 

[drew]

I get the feeling that Gray and Keys have mightily pissed off Paul Hayward at some time. How eloquently he has returned the favour.

 

[Giraffe]

But football is sexist. Otherwise why not have Gully's Guys?

 

[Twinkle Toes]

Only because this has been blown completely out of proportion!!

If it wasn't mentioned then all would have agreed she had a good game and that would have been the end of it.

All linesmen/women/officials get abuse from the crowd, always have and always will. Absolutely nothing to do with it being a woman. If she expects different she shouldn't be doing it in the first place

It was; they probably didn't; & it certainly isn't.

Hope that helps.

 

[clippedgull]

But football is sexist. Otherwise why not have Gully's Guys?

That would swell the Pink Pound fund at the Amex