Well done to Kelly Smith for taking on sexist Australian interviewer Ian Cohen earlier on this week.

Anyone outraged by Smith’s comment — she said she would have slapped Cohen if he had asked her to twirl — should focus their outrage towards the Australian interviewer.

I don’t believe Williams when she said his comments weren’t sexist because they were. She was right when she said no-one would ask Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer to flex their muscles after a win.

I don’t remember commentators asking Federer to show off his cardigan following his win at Wimbledon in 2008.

No-one asked him to twirl or strut up and down the court like he was on a Paris cat-walk during Fashion Week for them and that was a very stylish item of clothing.

But the point still remains, it doesn’t happen to male athletes and it shouldn’t happen to women.

If Williams had said what Smith had said she may have lost a few sponsors but the US athlete should have taken the risk.

Cohen’s comments aren’t on the level of Sepp Blatter’s infamous “women players need to wear tighter shorts,” but it shows 11 years later there are still men out there focusing on what the women play in and not the quality of tennis on show.

Too often are jokes made about the grunting during games or how attractive Maria Sharapova is. 

This is why Cohen’s comments were downplayed by the media — the Daily Mail had the audacity to say it was growing enlightenment that he only asked Bouchard to pirouette — and why at the time of writing he was still employed by Channel Seven.

Or why a week later no-one is talking about what he said. He has already been consigned to the depths of history.

It is ironic that four years ago on Monday Richard Keys resigned from Sky Sports after his sexist comments which were “made off-air to work colleagues, and were, of course, never intended to be broadcast,” were revealed to the public.

At the time Keys and Andy Gray were the darlings of Sky Sports but after footage was “leaked” of the two of them asking whether female referee Sian Massey and other female assistants “knew the off-side rule,” with Keys adding “Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her,” both were vilified by the English press and rightly so.

That brief conversation cost Gray his job immediately while Keys was still employed by the company for a few more days before handing in his resignation. Massey is a terrific official and takes charge of games because of her ability, not her sex.

It didn’t surprise me that a few men at the time felt the sacking was harsh. Ron Atkinson, who was sacked from ITV for calling Marcel Desailly the N-word, unsurprisingly thought that a suspension would have been fair.

Once a second video was leaked of the pair of them laughing when Gray asked Sky Sports co-presenter Charlotte Jackson to “tuck something into his trousers,” it was as clear as day that their comments were not a one-time slip of the tongue and that Sky had no option but to fire both presenters.

Although former Everton striker Gray had the cheek to instruct his lawyers to look into a case for unfair dismissal.

I’ve spoken previously about the views certain figures in sport have on women and it wasn’t that long ago that I was calling — and still am — for the removal of Richard Scudamore after his sexist emails were made public.

But the situation is improving, I can admit that and you only have to look at the coverage women’s sport is getting to see that slowly but surely more and more respect is being shown to our female sports stars.

Keys called the exchange between him and Gray “prehistoric banter” and while it it seems that almost half a decade on sexist comments aimed at female athletes are yet to be extinct in the world of sport, I would like to believe that it won’t be long before these situations will be a thing of the past.