In a world where machismo is excessively celebrated, Sian Massey has made strong progress for women wanting to become involved in professional football, writes Suhail Seedat. Undertaking only her second Premier League match at Molineux on Saturday, she was under the intense spotlight and managed to grab the headlines not for her good officiating but the ignorance of Sky’s dynamic duo Richard Keys and Andy Gray.
In a transcript printed by the Daily Mail, both ‘Keysie’ and Gray denigrated and disparaged women in football, declaring them incapable of knowing the offside rule - a rule Gray still fails to understand to this day and needs six different camera angles, slow-motion and blue and red arrows to help illustrate his point.
It’s this tribal caveman mentality that means football, a sport which is universally well-followed and attracts billions of people to watch and attend, is still a backwater in sporting culture. When FIFA president Sepp Blatter wanted to introduce tighter shorts for women to accentuate their femininity, the rest of football has little official encouragement to help progress this sport into the 21st century.
According to the Football Association there are 853 English female officials who are fully qualified and the number is rising. Earlier this season, Amy Fearn, a financial advisor in her day job, took charge of the final 20 minutes of the clash between Coventry City and Nottingham Forest, helping to break the cycle of one of the most male-exclusive jobs in western society.
It is surely inevitable that a women will be officials in the Premier League in the future. For those still championing medieval women’s rights, a simple question needs raising: how many male officials are good at their job? For example, England’s Howard Webb was deservedly chastised for his dreadful performance in the World Cup final, the biggest stage in football and is continually regarded as the best in the league. Yet a woman who has not even set foot on the touchline is the subject of loutish ‘banter’ based on her gender.
What is the difference between what Keys and Gray said and what ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson said about Marcel Desailly off-air? Is racism deemed more discriminatory than sexism? A person can’t help their skin colour, and a woman can’t help being born with different organs to a man. Incidentally, Atkinson has not been offered a full-time punditry role on television. Do both Keys and Gray deserve the same punishment?
Being a referee is a difficult job as it is, with the unnecessary abuse being flung from the stands and pampered millionaires - along with the odd doctored image on Twitter - but being a female official I imagine it’s doubly difficult. The FA, in this rare case, deserve to be applauded for their decision to fast-track competence over gender. It’s as simple this - if a referee is good enough and getting the decisions correct, they deserve to officiate no matter what age, religion, creed, colour or sex.
Full acceptance is achieving utopia. Even in parts of Britain, a minority of fans are ejected from their seats by stewards for disgusting remarks over a player’s race. Despite tackling racism in football in the 1980s and beyond, it’s saddening that people 20 years later still resort to debauched remarks. However, if the same lessons can be learned from that period and applied to a more open and accepting society, the transition could be seamless.
Who’s to know what happens after women officiating? England management or even FIFA presidency? Certainly the credit for paving the way would belong in part to both Massey and Fearn. Perhaps they deserve a little more respect from our more vocal personalities as a result?
Tags: Officials, Sky Sports, Women