SOCCER:MANY a harsh word was uttered yesterday as Do-me-a-favour- love-gate hotted up, perhaps the cruellest of all the suggestion that Richard Keys and Andy Gray having to miss last night's Bolton v Chelsea game was actually a reward and not a punishment.
The pair, then, were confined to their caves for the day by their Sky Sports employers, but they weren’t completely without support. Keys’ sister Susan, for example, told BBC Radio some of his best friends were women. “He has three sisters and a daughter – he has the greatest respect for women,” she insisted. “It was a bit of banter, perhaps we are all getting a bit precious.”
It was a view echoed by, of all people, former England cricket captain Rachel Heyhoe-Flint. “These were tongue-in-cheek comments and we are blowing something enormously out of proportion here.”
That was the opinion, too, of former Sun columnist Jon Gaunt when he turned up on Sky News, arguing the duo – “experts who have helped revolutionise the game!” – shouldn’t have been suspended, that it was just a bit of banter in what is “a man’s game”.
“It’s a McCarthy-like witchhunt,” he declared, comparing it to the treatment of Ron Atkinson who, he insisted, shouldn’t have lost his job for calling Marcel Desailly a “****ing lazy thick n****er”.
With friends like that you probably don’t need a whole bunch of enemies, but they’ve made a few. Retired referee Graham Poll, under the heading “Outdated Sky duo are a smug and sorry mess”, had a right lash at the pair in the Daily Mail. “They clearly think they are experts in all matters football, and you only have to listen to their smug declarations and ‘blokey’ guffawing to see that 20 years as Sky Sports ‘kingpins’ has done nothing to help their humility,” he said.
Poll recalled the last time he had the “temerity” to criticise Keys and Gray – “for their puerile and unfair attack on referee Uriah Rennie” – when “Keys phoned me and abused me for doing so”.
“He told me I was punching above my weight and he left me with the impression I wasn’t wanted at Sky. That showed the man’s true colours. Between the two of them they prevent free speech and thought as any adverse comments are quashed by them. Oh, by the way Richard, don’t bother phoning me after this comment – your opinions are of no interest to me.” Ow.
Stan Collymore, not previously known as a women’s rights advocate, also condemned the pair on Twitter. Their remarks, he said, were “reminiscent of opinions on black players in the 70s. They can’t play in winter, etc, etc. Dinosaur people have dinosaur opinions.
“Women, Men, Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Able Bodied, Disabled, Sight Impaired, Mental Health Issues, Christian, Jew, Muslim. FOOTBALL, This Game Is YOURS,” he added.
Keys, a 53-year-old Coventry City supporter – and you thought his troubles only began at the weekend? – has been Sky’s main football presenter since 1992, having worked before that as a co-presenter of ITV’s breakfast show, TV-AM.
Gray (55) has been his sidekick for much of that time after a successful playing career with Aston Villa, Wolves and Everton, among others. In 1977, he was the first footballer to win both the PFA Young Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year awards in the same year.
“This,” wrote Matthew Norman in the London Independent, “was entirely out of character for Andy, the neo-feminist thinker who once introduced himself to a fellow hotel guest, according to the Sun, with a lyrical, “You’ve got great ****ing t**s”. A bit of previous, then.
Last word to Giovanni Trapattoni, who was asked about the affair in Dublin yesterday. “I saw the game. It was very, very perfect. Ability is ability,” he said.
