Just by getting one decision right, Sian Massey may have done football broadcasting a huge favour

By Mike WAHS

Just my luck.  The first Monday Night Football of the season during which we won’t have Andy Gray inflicted on us and I’ll be out.

Sky hardly merit praise for their rather piecemeal punishment of pundit Andy Gray and presenter Richard Keys – they could scarcely have done anything else – but at least the issue has not been swept under the carpet.

Happily, Sian Massey, the female assistant referee so pointlessly and crassly mocked by Keys and Gray before Saturday’s Wolves-Liverpool match went on to have a belter, getting the key offside call of the game right when keeping her flag down as Raul Meireles broke clear from an onside position to set up Fernando Torres for the game’s first goal.

It is fanciful to imagine that Sky will dispense with the services of Ratty and Mr Toad forever; for some reason, the two are considered to be among Sky Sports greatest assets.  Alas, there will be many men who are happy to dismiss their comments as mere ‘banter’ and argue that football is ‘a man’s game’.  Football is not a man’s game, except in places like Saudi Arabia.

It is difficult enough for the FA to recruit competent match officials as it is, without two influential men taking the sport back to the bad old days and alienating half the population.  That key figures such as Rio Ferdinand, Lord Sugar and Graham Poll have all openly ridiculed Keys and Gray’s comments is encouraging but many terraces remain the last bastion of an antediluvian culture of machismo, prejudice and idiocy.

This morning, who did Five Live see fit do invite into the debate but John Gaunt, the tiresome oaf who was fired by TalkSport – TalkSport! – for being insufferable and offensive?  Gaunt is one who still believes that going to a football match is a type of working man’s catharsis, enabling the proletariat to relieve themselves of bile stored up after a week in a feminized, political-correctness-gone-mad workplace.  The imagination does not need to be stretched far to conceive that Gaunt is probably the kind of man who refers to his car as ‘the old girl’.

The irony is that many football pundits not only don’t know the offside rule but make a point of not knowing it.  What a crazy labyrinth this new fangled regulation is, Gary.  Indeed, Alan, who knows when you’re offside nowadays?  The answer, of course, is every qualified official in the world, plus those of us who comment on the game and are responsible enough to actually study the rule.  A rule, incidentally, which can hardly be described as ‘new’ any more since it was brought in ahead of Euro 2004.  Only Clive Tyldesley, who is criticised for other reasons, dares to suggest that the rule is perfectly straightforward if only people bothered to go to the FIFA website and read it.

We should give thanks to Massey.  Without knowing it, by the mere act of correctly not raising a flag, might just temper the boorish side of Gray’s broadcasting persona.  At his best, he can provide truly memorable moments of commentary – such as the one after which this website is named – but broadcasting brings with it responsibilities.  Tact, balance, humility and good judgement are required.  It is a complex, subtle issue, rather like the offside rule.  Perhaps it would be better if Gray didn’t worry his pretty little head about it.