Keys and Gray’s Linespeople Challenge: A Programme Pitch

You may have seen in the news that Sky Sports football presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys have been suspended from their posts after making a number of sexist remarks about lineswoman Sian Massey, who had (it turned out, correctly) allowed a debated goal by Liverpool’s Raul Meireles in their televised game against Wolves.

There has been much discussion of how to punish Gray and Keys for their trenchant chauvinism. Luckily, I’ve thought about it for a few minutes and come up with a watertight solution. Firstly, temporarily suspend Gray and Keys (lots of football fans are bored with them after all these years anyway) and replace them with Marina Hyde and Real Madrid TV’s Kay Murray. (They’d be more informed and more entertaining, after all.)

I wouldn’t have Gray and Keys removed from broadcasting or sacked by Sky, though – that would be overly vindictive for what was a momentary aberration. Instead, I’d make them the stars of a groundbreaking new programme on Sky One: Keys and Gray’s Linespeople Challenge. It would be a bit like An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington, but with less Ricky Gervais and more football, which can only be good.

Every week, Gray and Keys would run the line at a different Women’s Premier League game. Assuming that they are neither fit nor qualified to do so, and assuming that they’ve never even tried to run a line in their lives (I have, it’s not easy), their training with Sian Massey and a female fitness coach would form the first few episodes of the show. Once they have gone through this rigorous process, clapped and cheered on by any female football fan who wishes to offer her support, they would be ready to step onto a WPL pitch.

All of their decisions would be poured over by a panel of female ex-footballers and pundits, armed with a deep-seated sense of spite, as well as no end of video technology unavailable to Keys and Gray as they run the line in front of anyone who wants to heckle them. Any wrong decisions (or even right ones) will be mercilessly mocked by both this panel and then, later, the cast of Loose Women, who will not just chastise their actions but also undermine their hard-won qualifications using a number of crude, outdated sexist stereotypes.

After each game, they could then meet the managers and captain of each WPL team and explain their decisions in the utmost detail, with reference to Association Football rules as necessary. At the end of the season, they could then return to their posts presenting football matches on Sky Sports, hopefully having learned a little more humility and humanity.