Do women understand the offside rule? Let me enlighten these dinosaurs - Mirror.co.uk

RICHARD Keys and Andy Gray's dismissive comments about assistant referee Sian Massey are shocking to hear, but somehow not surprising.

Believing they were safely off-air, their casually sexist remarks are a sad reminder that stone-age attitudes linger in some parts of the game.

It is four years since then Luton boss Mike Newell outed himself as a dinosaur with his attack on female officials after his side's loss to QPR.

"This is not park football," said Newell. "So what are women doing here? It is tokenism, for the politically correct idiots. She should not be here."

Amy Rayner, the assistant referee who was the target of Newell's rant, made history last February as the first woman to referee a League football game.

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Newell's last managerial job saw him sacked by Grimsby back in 2009.

Most women working in football would have a horror story they could share.

My own comes from an awards do when a high-profile manager thought it was acceptable to ask me: "Do you like ­football?

"Do you know anything about football? Can you explain the offside rule?"

For the record, a player is offside if he or she is nearer to the opponents' goal than both the ball and the second-last opponent – and only if the player is active. I can happily illustrate with nail polish bottles if that would help.