It's not been a good few months for Sky Sports pundit Andy Gray. It will be a while before people will forget his comment about Lionel Messi on Monday Night Football after almost three years of extraordinary performances - "but could he do it on a Wednesday in January at Stoke?" Whether it be a result of jingoism, xenophobia, or just plain ignorance, it was the sort of stupid comment that we increasingly hear from football pundits these days, as intelligent, thoughtful folk are chucked off the sofas to make way for ineloquent, poorly-prepared, and, well, thoughtless morons such as Alan "he ought to have done better there" Shearer and Jamie "the defence literally fell asleep" Redknapp. Oh, the relief when I turn on to Match Of The Day and see Alan Hansen and Lee Dixon on the screen. I have nightmares that, a few years down the line, Hansen will be replaced by Ian Wright, or that Andy "tactics truck" Townsend will be poached from ITV.
To complete the horror, such a Match Of The Day From Hell would probably be presented by James "being hideously overweight with a wobbly chin somehow makes me funny" Corden.
But whilst moronic comments about the football itself are now par for the course and something I just feel obliged to put up with now - like my receding hairline, it annoys me and worries me but there's not a lot I can do about it - sexist rubbish isn't. So whilst on the one hand it seems unfair that Andy Gray and his co-presenter, Richard Keys, were caught off-air making ridiculous comments about the female assistant referee (or lineswoman?) at the Wolves-Liverpool game - surely it's a bit harsh to catch them for what was supposed to be a private conversation - the things they were saying were an absolute joke.
It's made all the sweeter by the fact that Liverpool's opening goal involved a borderline offside decision...which Sian Massey got absolutely spot on. At Inverness-Hamilton that afternoon I witnessed, for the umpteenth time this season, a male assistant who looked chubby, unfit and struggled to keep up with play; Massey had no problem sprinting down the line as Liverpool broke with speed. (Insert innuendo about her being "fit" if you wish)
So it's nice to see that Mr Gray and Mr Keys look like complete twits.
The one other thing that I noticed from Molineux on Saturday though was that the Wolves defenders and goalkeeper turned round with arms raised, made as if to sprint after the assistant to protest...and then suddenly realized it was a lady and stopped. Or at least did it from a distance instead of crowding and attempting to intimidate her. Such decorum made a pleasant change. It makes me wonder whether more female officials are what we need in order to try and expunge dissent from the game.
That said, it'll probably just lead to lots of wolf whistles and dodgy shouts from the crowd. That'll become tiresome quickly, unless it is of the quality at a Montrose-Elgin game I was at a few years ago and which almost got abandoned because of a pea-souper of a fog. Morag Pirie, a Scottish official, was running the line that day when one wag shouted "Can I walk you back to your car after the game, Morag?"
I can't remember her reacting. Which is probably for the best.
L.
PS - The obligatory jokes about the incident are coming thick and fast; examples include...
1) Andy Gray re-iterates his scepticism about the abilities of lineswoman Sian Massey - "let's see how well she does on a Wednesday night in January at Stoke"
2) Sky pundits have been quick to defend Andy Gray's comments - "It certainly looks bad, but he's definitely not that sort of pundit"
Anyone got any others?
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