Sky’s long serving television pundit Andy Gray is this week the latest public figure to find that you’re never more than a sentence uttered out of turn away from being hung out to dry.
And so a beautiful relationship comes to a shuddering and dramatic end. How many times have we seen this? The television couples we love broken apart by foolish words and actions they’d later regret. No more Monday nights watching Andy and Richard playing on the artificial grass, or rubbing their hands across each other’s chests as they demonstrate the difference between zonal and man to man marking. No more cries of “you don’t save those,” or “take a bow son” or “he’s given the keeper aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabsolutely no chance.”
No, after almost two decades of service Andy Gray has been hoisted aloft by his own chauvinism. Made to walk the plank by Sky for comments made, off air, about assistant referee Sian Massey prior to Saturday’s game between Wolves and Liverpool and a video released later of him asking a female colleague to tuck something into his trousers for him.
Richard Keys, the widely disliked anchor who has sat beside Gray since Sky began broadcasting Premiership football in 1992, has not been sacked. This despite him initiating the conversation about Massey saying that “somebody better get down there and explain to her about offside,” and predicting that Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish would go “potty” when the inevitable big mistake from the little woman out of her depth played out in front of them. Neither has everybody’s favourite pencil necked, mobile phone clutching nobody Andy Burton who was also recorded at the game acting like a spotty 12 year old pre-pubescent git and cracking jokes about her being a “bit of a looker.” But then Richard Keys and Andy Burton aren’t suing a Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper for tapping their phones are they? Funny that.
The views expressed by Gray and Keys are wrong. They were proved so within minutes of the game starting as Liverpool opened the scoring with a goal that the male commentators initially said looked very offside indeed, but which turned out to be bang in line and the correct call. So she does know the offside rule and aged just 24 she was able to stand there in a notoriously intimidating stadium in front of a live television audience in a high pressure situation and calmly make the right call.
Andy Gray should know a thing or two about pressure situations himself. In 1997 with one of his former clubs Everton in fairly dire straits after a lean few years and very keen to make him their manager he turned them down, choosing instead to continue the cushy number of sitting in a television studio criticising those that did have the guts to do the job.
If Massey had stuck the flag up and got it wrong would it be because she’s a woman who doesn’t know the offside rule? No, it would be because she’s a human being and human beings make mistakes. Was Peter Walton’s laughable, ludicrous, ridiculous and shameful decision not to award Blackpool a clear, blatant and obvious penalty when they were 2-0 up against Man Utd on Tuesday anything to do with his penis? No, just the same as Massey’s ability to do the job is nothing to do with her lack of one. To say somebody’s gender or race inhibits them from doing a job like running the line is a small minded and backwards attitude you’d struggle to even find in most golf clubs these days. Those who have attempted to justify support for the view with flimsy excuses about being unable to keep up with play should be invited to watch Mark Haywood’s performance at Loftus Road on Saturday where he was completely incapable of making up ground in counter attacks, or making correct decisions on even a semi regular basis, with penis presumably dangling away under his shorts with the expandable waistline.
Sadly Gray was, in my opinion, good at his job. Punditry is hard. You only have to listen to Graeme Le Saux, Peter Beagrie, Steve Claridge and Jamie Redknapp to know that. You have to voice an opinion first and foremost, rather than just repeating what has just happened in a slightly different way to the commentator did first time round. People don’t have to agree with you but it’s handy if the opinion is based on some semblance of fact or research with some proof. I call upon exhibit A for the prosecution once again – Claridge’s lazy, half arsed assessment that Kevin Blackwell’s sacking at Sheffield United in August was “a bit early Manish” when even spending ten minutes in a Bramall Lane pub would have told him it had been coming for 18 months or more.
Gray was, rightly, mocked for his ridiculous array of gadgets and in recent times he had rather become a parody of himself with his daft catch phrases that he would shout out whenever he felt they were vaguely relevant to the action taking place. But whatever anybody says I always rested a bit easier in my chair when we handed over to our match commentators for the evening Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. Good experienced guys, one who would soothingly guide you through the action in such a relaxed and expert manner that you hardly even realised he was doing it and the other offering clear, concise opinions on what he’d just seen. Occasionally I’d be in a situation where I’d be driving home listening to the first portion of a game on the radio with Alan Green and Mark Lawrenson then watching the rest with Andy and Martin and the difference was palpable. I’ll miss him, even if nobody else will, although no doubt Talk Sport, ESPN or somebody else will be putting together an offer as I write this. Clearly a few of his former colleagues don’t feel the same, hence the leaking of the tapes in the first place.
That’s not to say I support his view. Last week at Burnley we had Miss Massey running the line in our game and midway through the first half she failed to flag Wade Elliott offside when I thought he was. “Get that flag up you stupid cow,” I shouted. Would I have called a male linesman a stupid cow in the same situation? No. Is it therefore sexist? No, I was shouting at her because I thought she was wrong not because she was female. I spent a good portion of the second half of the Coventry game spraying expletives down at Mr Haywood as he bumbled his way through the match. “There’s nothing wrong with him you stupid bastard” I cried as he stopped the play for the Doyle head injury farce – again frustration at his incompetence, rather than a commentary on the ability of men in general to referee football matches.
Keys and Gray have both been in broadcasting for long enough to know the golden rule about microphones. There have been enough Ron Atkinson incidents now for people in television to know a mic is never dead and you have to watch what you say. But the reaction it has had has been totally out of proportion. At one stage on Monday Keys apologising for the comments actually shared the same ‘BREAKING NEWS’ ticker on Sky News as 37 people being blown to pieces in a Russian Airport. Have we got our priorities right here?
With 24 hour rolling news , papers, websites, blogs and so on there is a lot of space to fill on a week to week basis so things like this just seem to snowball out of control. Why is there this constant quest for an apology or a head to roll? As soon as anybody in the public eye steps out of line the incident is splashed left right and centre and then for days pressure will build until they either apologise (for what purpose nobody knows) or are fired or both. It’s wearisome.
Poor Sian, making her way in the game, is now going to be under intense scrutiny as every decision she makes will either form evidence for the prosecution or defence. She was taken off the Crewe v Bradford match on Tuesday no doubt stopping an army of reporters from descending on Gresty Road to write colour pieces and deep analysis of her performance. But she’s due to be back on the field, in the middle this time, at Corby at the weekend and so it is merely delaying the inevitable.
Hypocrisy has dripped from this situation at every turn. Sky Sports managing director Barney Francis said the comments were “entirely inconsistent with our ethos”. But where is that ethos when one stunning beautiful blonde woman after another is wheeled into the Sky Sports News studio and parked next to a male sports journalist with her skimpy blouse flapping in the studio air conditioning and barely concealing the breasts beneath? Where is that ethos when giggling girls in tight tops are paraded in front of Tim Lovejoy and the other nobodies that followed him into the Soccer AM chair for them to poke fun at and make smutty comments about? Where is that ethos when the same programme repeatedly runs a sketch where backroom staff dressed as Ant and Dec reach into “Georgie Thompson’s box” for a rummage around? Where was that ethos the last time Gray and Keys were caught in a similar situation, corpsing with laughter when asked to pass comment on womens’ football highlights? Or indeed when Keys was again recorded supposedly off mic describing a game he had just introduced between Scotland and the Faroe Islands as “daft little ground, silly game, fuck off?”
It seems to me that this ethos has only been found this week, to conveniently fire somebody who is indirectly suing the main shareholder in Sky for tapping his phone after the media went after him.
And what of that media? Lambasting Gray’s “pre-historic” views the Mirror this morning ran a damning comment piece on the commentator by one of their sports journalists under a diagram explaining the offside rule using lip sticks as a guide. Meanwhile The Sun nicked a picture of Miss Massey wearing a short skirt on a night out from her Facebook account and splashed it on the front under the headline “Gerrem off”. You could then turn to page three where a topless girl posed under a comment that quoted classic literature on the subject, the inference being she would obviously be too thick to think up such an opinion for herself so they got a journalist to do it for her while she rubbed lotion onto her tits.
And all this with a young girl at the centre of the story who wanted to be involved in football and has to work day to day in a primary school while all this is going on. It’s all been rather ridiculous really, from the moment the nonsense was uttered.
By coincidence, LFW has had a little storm of its own this week. Coventry may have only managed to bring 400 fans to Loftus Road at the weekend, but they’re an angry little bunch when they get going and the source of their fury this week is the LFW coverage of our game on Sunday.
LFW, and the Rivals site that spawned it, has never been about anything other than QPR fans expressing their views about what’s happening at QPR. It’s currently entrusted to me to do that and at the weekend we faced a Coventry side that, for the second time in three weeks, spent the whole game pumping long balls at us and trying to engage in silly spoiling tactics and gamesmanship. Thankfully, for the second time in quick succession, QPR’s class shone through and we were able to win in the face of the less than stylish challenge we were presented with.
By criticising Aidy Boothroyd’s team and saying that their tactics had the same effect on my brain as being repeatedly kicked in the head by a gang of steel toe-cap wearing muggers I am, among other things, a “fat bald spaz” “ill informed” and “nasty” according to Coventry fans who’ve taken the trouble to read the report and respond.
None of the Coventry fans have bothered to answer when asked if they actually think their side is good to watch this season, and I suspect the reaction is merely the standard lashing out of fans who have see their team wronged in an article online. We would no doubt do the same, as Mick Dennis knows only too well.
LFW isn’t, and has never been, something thrown together in five minutes based on lazy general perceptions of teams and players that I’ve never seen play. It is a meticulously researched labour of love, on which I spend hundreds of hours sitting in cold football grounds or in front of dire televised games trying to soak up as much knowledge about this division we’re in so that I can produce something a little more in depth and a bit different from anything else out there. Am I always right? No. Am I ever right? The Prediction League says now. But it’s always an honestly held opinion and never anything expressed with any malice or grudge to bear. Except if we ever play Man Utd. If I think a team is bloody horrible to watch I’ll say so otherwise what’s the point?
Still, should be a nice quiet weekend this week, I’m really well liked on the Hull City message boards.