Gray & Keys Versus The XX

Like hundreds of other radio shows, blogs, newspaper comment columns, and pub conversations, I want to talk about Richard Keys and Andy Gray.
Now, I’m a football fan and I’ve heard these two present football TV shows for over 15 years now. At first I really rated Andy Gray as a pundit, because, initially, he was passionate and not afraid to ruffle some feathers by giving an opinion. For those of you who don’t really follow football, you may assume that all football pundits are there to give an opinion. But, surprisingly, few of them do. Most trot out banal straightforward reactions to what they see on the screen, along the lines of “He smashed the ball into the roof of the net” or ”He just beat the offside trap, but hit it straight at the keeper”. Describing the action, without giving an opinion. This makes sense on the radio where you need to paint a picture of what is happening, but on television, we can see for ourselves.
But, over the years, as Andy Gray and Sky became part of the furniture, there became less opinion. He got to know the players, feel part of the establishment and spent less of his time criticising players when needed. This was reserved for foreign players, new to the league but who had yet to become his friend. He was also increasingly anti Liverpool – my team – in later years, but we’ll pass that by for now.
Richard Keys on the other hand, although a proficient presenter, irked me with his lack of football knowledge, inability to go off script, and yes, his obvious smugness.
So, seeing as I’d never liked Keys and had gone off Gray in a big way, should I have been delighted that they got sacked over sexist comments made the other week?
In a way I was. Being a sport loving chap, you can often find yourself cringing at other sports fans. In the eighties you’d hear crude racist abuse every now and then, and would die a little inside. Part of the appeal in sport is feeling a bond with other supporters of your “team” and hearing that they had the opposite views to you, well, you’d dislike someone with those views anyway, but when they were a fellow supporter, it just made you even sadder.
Thankfully I haven’t heard anything racist at a football game for many years, and the last time I did watching Liverpool at Anfield, some fans got the miscreants thrown out.
Sexist views however still persist. Not just in football, or in sport, but sadly in society. And obviously not just the British fall foul of this, in fact I’d consider we’re actually moving in the right direction quicker than, say, some of our European cousins.
But you still hear it, “you woman” often used as a term of abuse, chucked at a player considered not to be performing to the standard expected. And, reading about this furore on a couple of football forums I use, there is still a sizeable proportion of football followers who think Gray and Keys spoke the truth, that women have no place in officiating at a game of football. Hell, some of them think women shouldn’t even watch it, as they just don’t understand.
Antediluvian views obviously, and the part of me that hates reading these opinions, or hearing them at a game, was delighted that Keys and Gray were pulled up on this.
However, there are two main things about this that bother me.
Keys and Gray were wrong, serial offenders apparently, but should they have been instantly dismissed like this? The press reporting on this has bordered on hypocrisy and has tipped into being extreme in its reaction. Countless columns in newspapers have made out that The Sky Two are horrendous human beings for ruining the career of the assistant referee, Sian Massey, yet by writing this, and printing pictures of Massey in her private life, they have done a hundred times more harm. Massey has been forced to withdraw from two games because of the reaction of the press, and there must be doubts whether she’ll be able to go back to her career for a good while yet. How can she officiate at a game when there are hundreds of cameras there, looking to take a picture of either her getting something wrong, or showing the men she knows what she’s doing. Pick whichever option fits the editorial viewpoint.
Leave the woman alone, let her get on with her career. The game in question was enough to make Gray and Keys look stupid, she got a very difficult decision correct in the game, under high pressure, and one which countless male linesmen have got wrong. Indeed, Liverpool had an almost identical one at their next game, with a male linesman, which he got wrong.
The right response to what was revealed would be for Sky to fine them both, remind them that it musn’t happen again, and point out that Massey is obviously competent. And with their own eyes, they had witnessed that. The only way to get people to drop their ridiculous views, whatever they may be, is to give them evidence that they’re wrong. And Massey had done that.
But it turned into a witch hunt, engulfing all three, Gray, Keys and Massey. As usual, led by a ridiculous press, the reaction had become hysterical. The threat of others being dragged in grew day after day. And this leads to my second objection with this story.
In a misguided attempt at an apology – though not as misguided as everyone in the press, including the Guardian, would have you believe – Keys complained on radio of dark forces at work.
He was ridiculed a bit for this. But there is some truth there.
These weren’t broadcast opinions that Keys and Gray had been sacked for. They were private ones. Not for public consumption. But somebody, with an agenda, leaked them. And then we got several other clips leaked on youtube, of other indiscretions. It’s hard to be completely sure, but, by looking at the games involved, I think these clips spanned at least a couple of seasons.
Somebody had been collecting these clips, all, again, never broadcast, to be used when whoever was doing this, wanted maximum impact.
Who has been doing this? Who has been trawling through thousands of off-air clips of two football presenters looking for evidence against them? It has to be someone at Sky, a disgruntled co-worker who took against them for what they were doing. And does this have anything to do with Andy Gray threatening to sue News International, because one of their papers The News Of The World, bugged his phone? He, indirectly, threatened legal action against his employer, and two weeks later some clips surface? I’m not saying this is what happened, but it’s a rumour doing the rounds.
So Keys, in a way, is right about dark forces. There has been a stitch-up here.
How many of those rejoicing in two rich men being sacked, can honestly say that they’ve never, ever said anything offensive or abusive in private? I can give you the answer to that. None of them.
Everyone says things in private amongst friends that they’d never say out loud. Hell, everyone thinks nutty and offensive things in their heads, even though we don’t agree with our own thought processes. The number of ridiculously offensive things I’ve said in private to friends, just to get them to laugh, if regurgitated in public, and without any context, would lose me my job, all my friends, and probably see me end up in prison.
This is not to defend Gray and Keys, they obviously hold archaic and offensive views of women in sport. But they said their view in private, either to mock a fellow presenter, as a terrible attempt at flirting, or because they stupidly hadn’t realised women are actually competent at things nowadays. Some of them can even drive!
The film Minority Report feels eerily prescient, a future where everyone is tried and convicted for thought crimes. Where we can lose our jobs, our dignity and even our freedoms by what we do in private.
Hacking private phones, being sacked for saying something to a friend, this is a scary and dangerous road we’re heading down here and I don’t want to be a part of it. Because what it leads to is a world where we’re tried on our private persona, one which we don’t present to the world, and one which is obviously flawed. None of use is perfect and knowing that what we say and do in private can be used out of context by people with an ulterior motive against us, is scary bejesus.