Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Rangers v Celtic - Ibrox, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - September 3, 2023 Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
Despite a day of hogging the headlines very little has been heard from Jane Lewis as umpteen media outlets jumped on board the Offended Bus.
A very definite line of questioning from the BC reported wasn’t getting the desired result as she discussed Celtic’s 3-1 win over Motherwell with Brendan Rodgers.
There was little in the way of enthusiasm or engagement in the questioning with Rodgers well aware of the joy that would have greeted the result if the match had ended 1-1, the scoreline on 90 minutes at Fir Park.
When Rodgers stated ‘we’ll write our own story’ the tone changed. Lewis knew exactly what the Celtic boss was referring to following a week of celebrations from the state broadcaster after the hoops dropped into second place in the Premiership table.
From that moment the interview dynamics changed, by the time she left Fir Park Lewis was trending on social media with snowflakes uniterested in Scottish football suddenly outraged at a phrase that Lewis had repeated which suggests that she took it in her stride, you have these type of confrontations when you cover Scottish football.
This is just NOT true!!!
— Jane Lewis (@Jane__Lewis) February 25, 2024
Since she doesn’t dispute any particular part of my tweet it seems safe to assume that she feels all of it is NOT true!!!
As the tweet and Lewis’ response highlights the controversy yesterday wasn’t gender based, it was centred on club affinities.
Across the Celtic support that I know there is absolutely no issue with the gender of anyone in the media.
Eilidh Barbour is respected for the job that she does presenting on Sky Sports, keeping a check on the antics of the man child that is Kris Boyd.
With her place anchoring in-house TV coverage at Ibrox the attempts of Emma Dodds to be neutral or enthusiastic about Celtic on Viaplay or TNT just don’t wash, in Glasgow you can’t kick with both feet. Dodds certainly isn’t a Celtic fan.
On Wednesday Radio Scotland will be covering five Premiership matches with pre and post match interviews with managers, Lewis is expected to join Kenny Miller, Neil McCann and Steven Thompson for coverage from Rugby Park.
Jane Lewis could choose to diffuse this whole situation with a simple statement saying she wasn’t offended and doesn’t find it offensive and has even used such phrases herself in the past.
The fact she has remained silent tells its own story.
She actually came out earlier with a tweet saying she doesn’t think he was being sexist. She however didn’t ask for anyone to stop the pile-on of BR.
She has diffused it well today – So credit to her for that !
“Across the Celtic support that I know there is absolutely no issue with the gender of anyone in the media.”
Er you should read the comments a bit more. I’ve seen plenty of folk complain about women pundits because women know nothing about football etc. I really wish folk would stop trying to hold up our support as some bastion of righteousness. It’s a broad church with dissenting opinions on various subjects, and that’s completely normal. As far as I can tell the only things that unite us just about completely are hating the deadco/newco and loathing the Lawwells!
Ignore the BBC contract and don’t give interviews to them or anyone else for that matter. As Celtic are not the establishment club, everything will be dissected looking for faults, and what is said will be misreported and even the tone will be analysed. Just not worth the bother.
Every word Clemente speaks will be described like scripture