Jimmy Greaves writes for FootballFancast.com. Read his column below. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.
When you talked about females in football back in my playing days, you’d be restricted to the tea lady and the washer woman. It was even pretty unusual to see too many women in the crowd, apart from my wife Irene and the other WAGs. Now I think it will not be too long before we see a woman manager in the men’s professional game – and I don’t actually see why not.
Plenty of top managers have had no professional playing experience – Jose Mourinho, Gerard Houllier and Roy Hodgson among them – so why shouldn’t a woman have just as much respect as they did when they started out? It would be a bold move but I think younger blokes would be more open to the idea than old dinosaurs like me! The younger generation are far less prejudiced about anything than we were.
While the controversy over lineswoman Sian Massey was brewing a couple of weeks ago, I was watching Witham Town, the Essex Senior League team managed by my son Danny – and there was a woman linesman there, too. Just like Miss Massey, she had an excellent match. In fact, I’ve seen several women officials at that level and have never had any complaints. Of course, this poor woman was called a ‘silly cow’ all afternoon long, just as the bloke on the opposite touchline was called a ‘w***er’ for 90 minutes.
In my opinion any person – male or female – who wants to be a referee must be some sort of moron. Either a masochist or an egotist, to believe they can control the uncontrollable. Football matches are anarchy. Anyone who tells you different is a liar. But I see no reason why Sian Massey or any other woman should not run the line or referee in the Premier League. As long as she is as thick-skinned as any male ref, she’ll be fine.
I do still have some sympathy with Richard Keys and Andy Gray, though. I worked with Richard at TV-am for the best part of a decade and enjoyed his company. It is 20 years since I’ve known him and he wasn’t a big ‘name’ back then. Whether he’s become more arrogant since, as people are suggesting, I really couldn’t say. And if he really does know exactly what the offside law is in this day and age of ‘phases of play’ and the like, then he’s a better man than me!
He and Gray have certainly been naive, though. Anyone who has worked in TV knows you should be careful when you’re miked up. As such diverse people as Gordon Brown and Ron Atkinson can tell you, one slip-up and your career can be ruined.
Gray and Keys have clearly been stitched up by colleagues and it does seem that virtually everybody in television has a certain shelf-life. I worked for ITV for 19 years and by the time they sacked me, I was already beginning to think that there were no new angles and no new ways for me to talk about football. Keys and Gray may have been good when they started at Sky but they have been looking stale for a long while before all these sexist revelations.
It’s not been a great month for the TV industry, or for football, though. And I’d just like us all to grow up about the issue of sexism. To acknowledge that women and men can do most jobs equally well, but also not to be scared of the fact that we are, and always will be, fundamentally different. And that men will always take the p*** out of women, just as women will always take the p*** out of men.
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