Joey Barton suggests women football pundits hired to 'tick boxes'Piers Morgan Uncensored, TalkTV
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00:00 What is it about the women that you think is inappropriate?
00:04 Is it because they have not played the game
00:07 at the highest level of men's football?
00:09 - No, Piers, as you know,
00:12 I'll never not answer the question.
00:14 No, it's absolutely not that.
00:16 It's about, as I say, you have to be there on merit.
00:20 Like, you can't be there to fit this woke agenda
00:24 that we've currently got going on in society.
00:28 You don't have to have played the game.
00:30 Lots of managers haven't played the game at a high level.
00:33 Lots of good commentary people haven't played the game
00:35 at a high level.
00:36 Kind of Mark Chapman, Rory Smiths of this world.
00:40 But they've earned the right via hard work
00:44 over a prolonged period to get into that space.
00:47 Obviously, it helps to talk about the men's game.
00:50 If you've played that men's game,
00:52 the higher the level, arguably the better,
00:54 because it gives you the unique experience.
00:56 There's a lot of similarities between both sports, Piers.
00:58 Absolutely no danger in that.
01:00 But the men's game is just played
01:02 at a completely different speed,
01:03 with a completely different skill set needed.
01:07 And for someone to stand there and say,
01:09 "I would have done this in this situation,"
01:10 or, "He's made a mistake there,"
01:12 who have no experience of that.
01:15 And it's not just one or two.
01:17 It's been taken over.
01:19 And it ruins the experience for most men.
01:22 And it's the men's game.
01:23 And I feel, I don't want to come across as sexist,
01:25 but I'm absolutely not.
01:26 I've got a wonderful daughter, wonderful wife,
01:28 my grandmother, a big matriarch.
01:30 I want women at men's games.
01:31 You know, at Bristol Rovers, we had hair game too,
01:34 and it was a great initiative to get women in the stadiums.
01:37 But if we're going to talk about the technical nuances
01:40 of elite level football,
01:41 and we want to educate the audience,
01:43 which is the punditry, co-commentary role,
01:46 then we must do that with the most credible people,
01:49 not people who tick boxes or fill quotas.