Rangers legend slaughtered by press in sexism row

PC has gone mad yet again in this post-Brexit/Covid/MeToo/BLM world after Rangers legend Graeme Souness was slaughtered by the press and pretty much everyone else for suggesting Spurs and Chelsea’s set-to yesterday was a return to it being a ‘man’s game’.

Apparently the presenter David Jones piped up immediately after the producer yelled in his ear arguing that it was a ‘woman’s game too’.

But this is once again this crazy speech police world gone nuts with anything and everything called out and criticised because it might offend at least one person.

Souness in no way was saying anything against women, and this is the issue.

A statement, a phrase to suggest this particular match was physical and rough and tumble instead of the airy-fairy nature of a lot of the sport these days was absolutely rounded on, and has absolutely no implication that the sport excludes women.

Because if any sport has become especially inclusive to women the past few years, it’s football.

If a women’s game is filled with physicality, the phrase could be used and mean the same thing, but of course, it just wouldn’t work if taken literally. And in fairness, the amount of women’s football we’ve seen, the players are a credit to the sport for not messing around and rolling about like their male counterparts have been known to. In many ways, they’re more ‘men’ than the blokes are.

It simply has nothing to do with excluding an entire gender.

Souness, rightly, doesn’t regret his wording, because we’re sure plenty women out there wouldn’t have complained about the phrasing either.

Is he sounding old school? Yes, and there is nothing wrong with that. Unless you actually want to be offended by it, and that’s up to you.

If people are allowed to slate Souness for his wording, then he’s allowed to use that wording too.

And maybe we can all stop being wound up by how a man in his 60s praised a match of football.