Sorry gents but the era of ogling women at sports is over

We’re well into the 21st century now so grow up and deal with it.

Are there no sacred, good time, real men’s pleasures to be left in the world? No pit girls in Formula One, no women leading the Adonis-like darts players to the stage, and a New Zealand Rugby hotline to report behaviour that isn’t ‘‘respectful and responsible’’. What next?

How did it come to this? Here’s a clue. The calendar.

We’re now 18 years into the 21st century, so what seemed fine and dandy last century may not be mainstream behaviour now.

Let’s start with the serious stuff. A hotline for rugby problems (0800 246 643) has recently been set up. That’s disturbed some commentators, who feel it’s over the top interference from the people who run the sport.

I would have thought the evidence of 265 young women, that revealed American gymnastic doctor Larry Nassar for the depraved sexual predator that he is, would have shown why knowing exactly where to report bad behaviour was a good idea.

Some of the girls the disgusting Nassar assaulted tried to make their voices heard at the time, but trial testimony shows their complaints were lost in the uninterested maze of the sport’s administration.

What rugby, one of the few sports in the country wealthy enough to do it, has done is establish a service run by an independent group, headed by an employment lawyer, Steph Dyhrberg, where it’s possible, on the 0800 number, to immediately talk in confidence to someone who is not a direct employee of New Zealand Rugby.

Rugby is part, as Sport NZ chief Peter Miskimmin says ‘‘of every community in New Zealand’’. So it sets the tone, whether it likes it or not, for all our sport.

If someone in a sport is suffering from bullying, homophobia, violence, or sexual assault, having an independent, and, hopefully, responsible, respected, and efficient, body to turn to, looks less like overkill to me than a reasonable, 21st century approach.

Talking again of the 21st century, darts in Britain, its hand forced by broadcasters, is dropping what, if we’re honest, is the weird ritual of having young women in tight outfits acting as an entre´e to male sports.

Not, it must be said, without squeals of outrage from Barry Hearn of Matchroom Sports, the company that runs professional darts in Britain. Hearn evoked the good old ‘‘PC gone mad’’ line. ‘‘I have a big problem in the age we live in. I’ve got the BBC, ITV and Sky, my three UK broadcasters, saying to me this is not part of their editorial policy any longer. They do not want to show the walk-on girls on television. I have no problem with the girls.’’

Mind you, using Hearn as a yardstick for social norms is a little dubious. Barry’s son Eddie is promoting the Anthony JoshuaJoseph Parker fight. Barry Hearn once told an interviewer how in 1995 he measured whether Eddie was growing up right by getting in a boxing ring with the then 16-yearold and punching him as hard as he could. Barry was then 47. ‘‘I hit him with a proper shot. It was great because he came back and dropped me twice in the second round. It was the best defeat I ever had.’’

Meanwhile Formula One racing has dropped the grid girls, officials saying that having, as the sport has for years, women in skin tight clothes holding signs in front of the cars, was an area ‘‘that needed updating’’.

It may not have done a lot of good to the ‘‘bring back the grid girls’’ cause that a German Formula One driver, Nico Hulkenberg, said: ‘‘It would be a pity if they took away the eye candy from the grid.’’

The fact is that times change. They hadn’t invented the phrases ‘‘fun police’’ or ‘‘PC gone mad’’ when they introduced seat belts in 1972. But, I am not making this up, there was a sizeable group, led by a popular Auckland columnist, Noel Holmes, who said belts would be so restrictive they’d take all the pleasure out of driving.

To be blunt, in 2018 a taste for ‘‘eye candy’’ in sport feels about as archaic as a demand for belt free driving.