Reuters Soccer Blog

Football still offside in attitude to women

The British media furore over two television presenters’ sexist comments over a lineswoman at a Premier League match at the weekend has thrown the spotlight on the subject of women in soccer – be it on the pitch or off.

Sky Sports duo Richard Keys and Andy Gray have apologised for saying female officials “don’t know the offside rule” when they were talking about lineswoman Sian Massey at Saturday’s match between Wolves and Liverpool when they thought their microphones were switched off.

She in fact made the correct call on a big borderline decision that allowed a Liverpool goal to count.

Even if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t be because she was female – or is someone going to tell me it was a woman who missed Frank Lampard’s “goal” that clearly crossed the line but was not given in the England v Germany match at last year’s World Cup?

The notion you need testicles to get your mind around the offside rule is sadly not restricted to Massey’s case, as female soccer reporters like me find out from time to time, even though things have of course improved over the years.

I have yet to be asked to explain the offside rule – although I am quite excited about the prospect I might be. One of my friends, a football reporter on a British national newspaper, was asked a couple of years ago by a Premier League manager at an awards ceremony to do just that.

She actually went along with his request but to this day regrets not thinking of a comeback along the lines of “You don’t understand the offside rule? No wonder your team keep losing!” I have plenty of ripostes up my sleeve for the poor person who tries to ask me.

A South Africa rugby match is a whole other world

The contrast between the highly-controlled environs of the soccer World Cup venues and the likes of Cape Town’s Newlands stadium, home to a South Africa v France rugby test on Saturday, was marked.

At Newlands, the supporter is king. For decades fans have turned up early with their own food and lit hundreds of barbeques, or brais as they are known in South Africa.

The wafting smell of smoke and sausage signals that the stadium is in range and is sure to quicken the stride of the arriving masses.

Every brai party is of course accompanied by groaning ice boxes of beer and wine and the story is similar at the country’s cricket grounds where scores of permanent brais are supplied along with bargain-priced “meat packs.”

The media are treated to a complimentary pre-match lunch, drinks and even a bag of the local dried meat delicacy biltong to munch during the match.

Things are somewhat different at the World Cup.

Symbolic moment as rugby comes to black township of Soweto

South Africa’s long standing racist past means it still a country of great contrasts but with the change in power and social dynamics come great ironies too.

The latest will be played out on Saturday when the citadel of black South African football, the Orlando Stadium in Soweto, plays host to a Super 14 rugby match involving the Blue Bulls, the team so beloved by the white Afrikaners.

Although it is almost two decades since South Africa’s political changes began, it is the first time a match of this nature is hosted in a black township and represents the potential of dramatic images as thousands of white fans from the country’s most conservative areas head into the biggest black township to watch their team in the semifinals of the Super 14.

For most of the whites it will be their first trip anywhere near Soweto, scene of much of the internal unrest against apartheid in the 1970s and 80s and today rife with crime.

To that end, the Bulls union have laid on trains from Pretoria to the station right outside the Orlando Stadium and will bus in thousands of others, who are being invited to leave their cars several kilometres away from Soweto and use ‘park and ride’ facility.

The Bulls have had to give up home advantage in Pretoria for their semifinal against the Canterbury Crusaders because their cathedral, Loftus Versfeld, is one of the 10 World Cup stadiums and FIFA have taken over the venue to prepare the turf and other facilities before the tournament starts on June 11.

Loftus, also used during last year’s Confederations Cup, will host six World Cup matches, including South Africa’s second encounter of the tournament against Uruguay on June 16.

from Left field:

Things warming up nicely on the South African sporting front

The South African sporting public were a little underwhelmed by the early stages of the Confederations Cup and the British and Irish Lions tour but the last few days has seen a major turnaround and there is now something in the air.

Relatively high ticket prices combined with the Sprinboks' decision to keep their players out of their Super 14 teams combined to ensure the early provincial games were played against a backdrop of empty seats.

Now, however, with the first test looming on Saturday, a ticket for King's Park is like gold dust. The few thousand Lions fans who followed the team round the country over the first three weeks have been joined by a massive influx for the tests.

Estimates are that more than 30,000 will arrive for some part of the tour and they were out in force in Durban this week. Balmy seaside temperatures, good cheap food and, vitally, even cheaper beer, makes the coastal resort a dream destination for rugby tourists.

Organised groups, more often than not bedecked in matching tour shirts, are fillling the oceanside bars by night, while taking advantage of the wonderful opportunities South Africa has to offer by day.

While everyone has an opinion on whether the Boks should or should not have played a warm-up match and on the Proteas' prospects in cricket's World Twenty20, the efficiency of Iraq's back four in the Confederations Cup has not been at the conversational fore.

However, South Africa's victory over New Zealand on Wednesday has stirred things up and, with the World Cup less than a year away, previously pessimistic fans are warming again to their side, who are well-placed to reach the semi-finals of this dry-run tournament on home soil.