Monday Night Football will look very different tonight on Sky Sports as it will be without two of the faces of the channel. Host Richard Keys and Commentator and Analyst Andy Gray have been told that they will not be involved in the show tonight which is highlighted by Chelsea’s visit to Bolton Wanderers, and the reason for this being the comments that they made on Saturday about female lineswoman, or referee’s assistant to coin the correct term, Sian Massey.
Massey went into work on Saturday thinking it would just be a normal day for her, doing her job running the line for the Liverpool game against Wolves, helping the referee with important decisions, whether they be who to award the throw in to, whether there should be a free kick, acting as an extra pair of eyes if things get heated, and most importantly for a referee’s assistant, making the offside decisions.
This is where Keys and Gray come into play. The faces of Sky Sports’ football coverage made a few remarks about Massey when they were not on air, however they did have their microphones on, and therefore anything they said was able to be heard in the production gallery. Does this all sound a bit too familiar?
Let’s look back a few years and remember that a very similar thing happened to Ron Atkinson who made remarks about then Chelsea defender Marcelle Desailley. Atkinson’s comments, although he says were
made out of frustration for the players performance rather than actual racism did include racial language (which I will not repeat). Understandably Atkinson was sacked, but should the same happen to Keys and Gray?
There are a few differences in these two scenarios. The first being that Keys and Gray are faces of the channel whereas Atkinson was a freelance commentator who is easily replaced. The second is that Atkinson used racially motivated language which may have shown his own underlying feelings, whereas Gray and Keys seemingly just echoed the sentiments of the majority of male football fans in the country. Atkinson’s comment shows the racial ignorance and stupidity of one specific human and mic or no mic, he was completely out of line and he deserved to be sacked for what he said, because that language not only has no place in football, it has no place in society. Keys and Gray’s however simply exposed male football as a sexist sport, and proved that the opinion of men in pubs is shared by those within the sport.
Gray and Key’s comments were stupid but they only said what most men think, and had they not been mic’d they wouldn’t have been any different to the majority of male football fans (unlike Atkinson). Sky did what they had to do as they couldn’t be seen to also be endorsing this chauvinistic attitude, but when it came down to the match, Gray called Raul Mereiles offside in the build up to the first goal whilst lineswoman Sian Massey said he was onside, and TV replays confirmed that she was correct.
So I guess she had the last laugh as she did her job properly and will likely be considered for another Premier League game, whilst Andy Gray and Richard Keys lose a pay day, and in getting the offside call wrong, ironically they end up looking like a pair of tits!
