Before I start, I will put a feminist alert on this post so that anybody who can’t handle a female point of view should click off right now. I know that a lot of men think of feminism as a bad thing, as Rebecca West once said, “I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”

For those who aren’t quite clear, in a nutshell, feminism is nothing more than the desire that women are treated like equal human beings, not a desire to denigrate men. I just wanted to get that clear before I start, ok..?

I’m quite sure that some of you will argue that I’m over-reacting to the size of the problem, but it’s a pretty safe bet that those who say that will be men. All will qualify their statements with “I’m not sexist” and some may even assert that sexism in football is ‘under control.’ Yer, right.

I posted on the main board, expressing my opinion about an incident in a match between Cardiff City and Middlesbrough and the common thrust of the discussion soon became pretty much divided along gender lines. The females responding to the post saw the attack on Sian Massey as being deliberate whereas the males were overwhelmingly of the opinion that it was an accident.

How is it that an incident which is clearly caught on camera should produce opinions that are so sharply divided along gender lines..? Why is it that there is such resentment towards women in football..? Why do so many men feel they need to defend (literally) their turf..? Why are women seen as such a threat to male hegemony in the game?

I think it’s more than just a matter of the game itself it’s more to do with what football represents to many men (not all, but many). Some males regard it as the last place remaining where men can simply let go and be themselves. In football grounds they feel safe, surrounded by their own kind they can escape into their weekly fantasy. In identifying with their team they can dream…… and dream they do. The football pitch is the “hallowed turf”, where demi-gods do great deeds that all in the crowd wish they could do, but of course, they know they never could. And so they come and they worship and they sing their songs and tell female supporters to “Get ‘em out for the boys, darlin” and then laugh and slap each other on the back at such wit… such banter….. “Yeah, that’s right b****, get ‘em out for the lads. Let’s see yer tits, luv” Hahahaha… guffaw, guffaw, guffaw…..

Sad, isn’t it..?

In truth though, this sort of man will just about tolerate females in the crowd. They do this because there is a certain kind of female who will join in with this blokieness. Aptly named “The Geezer Bird” (Prime example: Helen Chamberlain of Sky Sports fame), she will wear the club shirt…. Even kiss the badge on occasion. She will weep when the team loses and hug her man passionately when they win.... which (the hugging, that is) is highly approved of because it is an indicator to all his mates that he’s going to “get it” tonight.

And so, women will be tolerated in the crowd… provided they play the game, that is. The game being to adopt masculine traits, dress like a male fan and swear, burp and fart like male fans. All this is acceptable.

But now we have a new breed of woman in football grounds, and this is most definitely NOT acceptable. The female match official.
The female match official is a threat to this last bastion of masculinity. Why..?

Could it possibly be because she is breaking the rules of acceptability.? She’s defying the unwritten code..? If so, what is it that she has done that is so terrible..?

The answer is very simple. The female match official is… wait for it… shock horror…. SHE IS ON THE PITCH..!!

The pitch is the holy of holies. It is the mecca of football…. The hallowed turf…. The field of dreams…. It is sacrosanct male territory, where Saturday’s heroes clash like Gladiators in the colloseum. And it’s being violated by A BLOODY WOMAN..!!

Every man in the crowd has dreamed, since childhood of being such a hero…. Of being out there….. of scoring the winning goal, or lifting the trophy high above his head to the ecstatic roars of acclaim from the fans who worship him. It is the ultimate male ego-orgasm.

Of course, the vast overwhelming majority of men realise by adolescence that they personally are never going to make it and so they attach themselves to their club with a level of tribal devotion and brotherliness that would make Freemasonry look like the multicultural society.

The team is everything to them. I read once (can’t remember who said this) that to many men, their football team is everything. They could cut themselves off from their relatives…….. divorce their wives…. disown their kids…. quit their jobs…….. but they will NEVER change their football team. Once that connection is made in childhood / adolescence it is set in concrete for life.

The old music hall joke about the woman who complains to her husband that he loves Tottenham Hotspur more than he loves her to which he replies “I love Arsenal more than I love you” is less of a joke than some might imagine. The relationship of a man with his football team can be the purest of loves…… it can transcend just about every other emotion that a man feels.

Striker Alan Shearer once said on air “There is nothing better than scoring a goal. Nothing, no other feeling and no other experience anywhere in life comes anywhere near it”, to which Birmingham City director Karren Brady replied “Have you told your wife that?”

And so we see the importance in which football is held in the psyche of many men. Not all, of course…. The majority actually hold a balanced view on life….. but for a significant number, it is a very real thing…. And it is this proportion of the football watching public that causes all the problems…….. and it is not restricted to the fans in the crowd.

Female football officials… mostly in the diminutive shape of Sian Massey at the moment are perceived by this group as a threat to all that they hold most dear.

She is on the pitch. She is out there, where so many men would give their back teeth to be..… where they have dreamed of being since they were little boys… where their greatest fantasies take place and all their hopes and dreams either come true in rapturous ecstasy, or are brought crashing down in abject misery. She is out there……… and not only that, she is in a position of authority.

She can affect the outcome of the match with one wave (or not as the case may be) of her flag. She can completely dash the hopes and dreams of all those men, seemingly at her whim.. What if, one week, Rooney bursts through the Manchester City defence and That…. WOMAN… puts her flag up and causes United to not qualify for the Champions League next season, costing Manchester United tens of millions of pounds in the process and enraging seventy thousand pilgrims at the Theatre of Dreams.

She can do this….. This wee scrap of a girl who actually is very good at her job. At every match she officiates in, her every decision is scrutinised on television in depth by analysts, former players, armchair pundits and of course, men in pubs. All desperately hoping she will get an important call wrong somewhere. So far she hasn’t, but one day she will….. nobody is perfect, she is bound to get one wrong one day…… and then they will all leap on the opportunity to crucify her with great glee. . Vilify her… slaughter her live on Super Sunday and why..?

Because she’s there. Because she’s doing what she is doing….. and they aren’t.

The encroachment of women into football isn’t new… or any sport, come to that. Women are becoming more involved all the time. At under ten level in England, more young girls are taking up football than young boys, so the FA says. The Rugby Football Union claims that Rugby is fast overtaking football as the sport of choice for parents of young boys. Many parents, appalled by what they see on Match of the Day, or the excesses of overpaid players that they read about in their papers or hear on the news, don’t want their sons to be involved in that.

They don’t want their kids to turn into bad tempered hooligans who couldn’t spell sportsmanship if you wrote it down for them…. These parents don’t want to have to rub shoulders with the “touchline terrorists” that are so prevalent in youth football in England. They don’t want their sons to be taught how to cheat, and dive, and feign injury, or to swear at officials.

They don’t want their sons to grow up to be sexists.

And so increasing numbers are turning to a sport with a reputation for strong, manly play, but with a spirit of camaraderie and also of respect for officials….. and that game isn’t played with a round ball.

But at the female grass roots level, that kind of behaviour doesn’t appear. Oh for sure, some adult females can get feisty during games, there is no denying that…. but female football has none of the awful reputation of the male game. And so girls football is flourishing in England. We (England) have been slow off the mark in comparison to other countries such as Norway, Germany or the USA….. but we’re catching up and there is one bet I’d be happy to make, and that is that the England women’s team will win a World Cup before the men’s team does..!!

The old male dominated bastions of sport are falling one by one…. Even the MCC, that haven of cricket conservatism had to bow to the inevitable. Before the 1999 Cricket World Cup, the MCC wanted a multi-million pound grant from the National Lottery to help pay for improvements to the Lords’ ground. They were told at first that they couldn’t have it because they discriminated against women by not allowing them to become MCC members and as the National Lottery does not give money to discriminatory organisations, they would either have to change their rules or not get the grant.

Money talks. They changed. The day that Rachel Heyhoe-Flint, former captain of the England women’s hockey, football and cricket teams walked into the Long Room at Lords’ as a member swept away a hundred years of male chauvinism. The Colonel Grumblies in their “Egg and Tomato” ties choked on their gin and tonics. They must have needed that lottery money really bad.

Karren Brady became the first female director of an English football club in the 1980s’ and has since been followed into the boardroom by the likes of celebrity chef Delia Smith at Norwich City. Wendy Toms became the first female to officiate in a league match in 1991. In 2000, she ran the line in the final of the Carling Cup at Wembley and also at two matches in the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000. She was vilified and attacked by fans, players and pundits alike throughout her career but only quit the game when she decided to start a family. She stopped refereeing when she wanted to, not by being forced or hounded out.

She has since been followed by others, but the sexism rows are never far away. In 2006, Assistant Referee Amy Rayner was attacked by the then Luton Town manager Mike Newell who openly declared “I know this sounds sexist, but I am sexist. This is not parks football, so what are women doing here? This is tokenism for politically correct idiots” Newell didn’t last much longer in his job.

Amy Rayner was appointed to the FIFA list of referees at the end of that season.

Need I even mention Andy Gray and Richard Keys..? They were eventually sacked by Sky Sports for their on air comments about Sian Massey but the affair lingered on for several days before being resolved. Had they made similar comments based, not on the gender of match officials but about race, they would have been sacked quicker than you could say Ron Atkinson.

But all this talk of sexism provides an irritating smokescreen for something that should be an immense benefit to the game.. There is no doubt that refereeing causes great dissent and discussion in the game. Ask Frank Lampard. In last Summers’ world cup he struck a shot that hit the underside of the German crossbar, bounced down at least a metre over the line and came out. “No goal”, said the officials to apoplectic outrage from the England fans. But what goes around comes around. Last Saturday, when the same players’ much tamer effort was spilled by Tottenham goalkeeper Gomez and trickled towards the goal, Gomez stopped the ball from fully crossing the goal line, only this time, the officials gave a goal. Two horribly incorrect decisions made by male officials.

Imagine the furore if either of those decisions had been made by Wendy Toms… or Amy Rayner.. or Sian Massey….

There is clearly a crisis in refereeing. The game is under scrutiny like never before with cameras everywhere, ill discipline on the pitch and incorrect decisions that can affect the outcome of championships or cost the affected clubs many millions of pounds… and yet….. football fans want to completely ignore the talents that could be available from 53% of the population, namely, women.

With refereeing recruiting and retention at an all time low and some officials at local league level having to take charge of three matches or more a week because of the lack of men wanting to do the job, how can the game afford not to tap a resource that is willing, and very, very capable..?

You’d think that football would be welcoming women with open arms..!!

Biologically, physically and intellectually, there is no reason whatsoever why women cannot officiate at the highest level. Of course it will mean them being “on the park”…… on that sacred turf… but if they achieve their status on merit, do the job and show the resilience, persistence and strength of character to get there in the first place… then why not..?

Because they’re women..? Now tell me you’re not sexist.