Quote Originally Posted by Citizen's Nephew View Post
Good post. I agree with a lot of this and the BBC comment. However, I'd summarise as follows:

Male/Female commentator/co-commentator for ANY sport. It shouldn't matter and they don't need to have played the game at the highest level. Equality.

Male/Female pundits for ANY sport should have played the game at the highest level e.g. Men's pro competition or women's pro competition. Equality.

Last night there was a male commentator for the Croatia v Wales match and a female pundit/co-commentator. Mixing it up seems the fairest way imo however, your mate would have a case based on the Equality Act as there would appear to be discrimination (re. not having played the women's game and this not applying to women not having played the men's game).

Further, if we take tennis as an example; mixing it up (as above) has been going on for years now and is the norm. Female umpires for men's finals etc.

I suspect that in a decade's time this will be a non-issue in football (and probably isn't for a lot of younger people anyway). I think it's also really, really important to remember just how much the women's game (football) was held back and discriminated against i.e in terms of equality of coverage and even being allowed/recognised. So I do understand that whilst it may seem that it's all happening really quickly and being 'forced' it really isn't. It's just been way too slow in catching up.
I agree with all of that, yet I still have a bit of an issue with women’s football.

To bring another sport into it, cricket has a mix between men and women commentators on Sky and I’d say Allison Mitchell is among the best of the regulars on Test Match Special.

Generally speaking, commentators shout more in football, than they do in tennis and cricket and there’s a woman football commentator I don’t like because of her shouty voice, but then there are men I feel the same about including Sky’s main commentator., Peter Drury.

We all watch women’s tennis almost as a separate sport from the men’s game because it’s always been like that all through our lives and I’m getting like that with cricket now - I can watch a women’s game without the need to constantly compare it the men’s game.

In football, I find it less easy to do that with the main reason being that woman goalkeepers tend to be so much smaller than men’s ones and they can be given no chance by the sort of shot a decent male keeper would save easily. Therefore, I can’t see me ever being able to watch a women’s football in the same way I do a female tennis or cricket game.