I PLAYED rugby league for many years, and one of the very best referees I ever played under was an Australian called Caylene Vincent.

Caylene was a very good referee and it never crossed our minds to think of her as somehow a less well qualified referee, or a less appropriate referee because she was a woman.

Until the furore over Andy Gray and Richard Keys’ bonehead comments, I had never looked back on it – what strikes me is that it was very unremarkable and was immediately accepted.

Incidentally, that was more than 20 years ago in rugby league. Still, we were in the dark ages then, and we did not have the benefit of those two enlightened gentlemen from Sky to put us right.

I guess that all those big rugby league softies just did not think like real men do, yeah, real men from the Sky football commentary box. And to think people used to laugh at Eddie Waring.

As Andy himself might once had opined “it’s a funny old world”.