When I was thinking about starting this project a couple of people suggested that I should get my hands on a book about sports writing by the author and journalist Lynne Truss (she of Eats, Shoots and Leaves fame). Truss spent four years as a sports writer on The Times, covering a wide variety of sports, and Get Her Off the Pitch!: How Sport Took Over My Life is an account of those four years.

Despite the title, I found that there was less discussion and dissection of what it's like being a woman in a man's world - and there's no doubt that sports journalism still is a man's world - than I'd hoped. This is mainly because Truss was mandated to write about sport from an outsiders' perspective. She was chosen to write a sports column because she didn't know anything about sport; she wasn't a female journalist trying to make it in the field because she wanted to be a sports journalist. To be fair to Truss, she explicitly acknowledges this, saying:

"First of all, I should mention that I am not the only woman ever to write about sport (or, indeed the only woman to enter a male-dominated world), so please don't assume that I think I am. But I can't speak for other women sports writers, because they were (and still are) doing the job properly, competing directly with the men in terms of knowledge and expertise, and I was always meant to be a kind of novelty act, dancing on the sidelines, playing the part of the Martian sending a postcard home, which weakened my position in significant ways."

There was one passage which stood out for me in which Truss questions why sports journalism is a male-dominated profession.

"... The more I saw of this particular all-male world of sports writing, the more I found it peculiar that it was even legally allowed to exist. Why is sports journalism considered a job that only a man can do? Why is it (generally) only men that are drawn to it? Is it a job for a man? ... All I wonder is: are there any exclusively male reporting qualities that can fully account for men's complete - and continuing - dominance of this profession? I don't see how that can be possible."

Sadly, she doesn't really investigate this point further. She provides an interesting anecdote about an Egyptian newspaper sending an all-female reporting team to the 1998 football World Cup and mentions research showing that watching football raises testosterone levels, before referring to an apparent shift towards a "more politically correct inclusion of women" in sports coverage. But there's no real examination of the whys and wherefores of all this.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book. It's well-written, tells some good stories about major tournaments and players, and provides some interesting insights on the challenges of covering sport - cold press tribunes, the challenges of filing a match report minutes after the final whistle, waiting hours for stuff to happen. But perhaps it's symptomatic of the problem that Truss was chosen as a "novelty act". Would The Times or another newspaper have picked a man who was clueless about sport to write an outsiders' perspective? Probably not, although there are many men out there who really don't care one iota about sport. Choosing Truss enabled them to play with the stereotypes of women watching football, golf or cricket and the fact that with few female writers in those fields, Truss would be an anomaly.

For a woman wanting to get into sports journalism, Get Her Off The Pitch! wouldn't be much help. It's definitely not a guide to the industry. But I'd recommend it highly for entertainment value.