After all, I'd spent hours in the editor's office pleading with him to see reason before this ridiculous appointment was rubber-stamped.

As everyone knows - and only Campo, unlike our so-called expert, has the balls to say - women should not be allowed to write about sports in which they have not participated. And, please, let's not pretend ''women's rugby'' is a real sport. Underwater Scrabble would draw a bigger crowd. Unless you threw in a couple of G-strings and about 500 litres of jelly.

Of course, with nothing better to do after their hair appointments and tennis lessons, the female agenda bared its claws. Reckoned Campo had gone from goose step to goose. Suggested he might be a pertinent subject for the ongoing studies about the effects of concussion in sport. Said that, like one of those Japanese soldiers in the New Guinea jungle who didn't know the war had ended, he seemed to think he was still on the 1984 grand slam tour.

But, having hung on his every printed word, one thing is obvious. If there is to be a person in the media with the right to demonstrate he has no idea about the game, it should be Campo. You only need to have read or heard his comments on all kinds of issues to realise that he is, ummm, well, a bloke.

Yet, not even 101 games in the green and gold ensured Campo was given the respect he deserved after his insightful tweet. One foul-fingered woman even called Campo a ''dickhead'', but the flying No.11's reflexes are still too sharp for that. He replied that he wasn't quite sure what gender the tweeter must be, given such frightful language. Certainly not ''a lady'', hey Campo. Well, not the nice tea-making, sandwich-spreading ladies that used to make a far more useful contribution to the game in the canteen at Randwick.

Not that Campo hasn't got feelings. So hurtful were the responses he was forced to delete his tweet. Bloody trolls with their insensitive remarks.

I mean, you would think from the comments directed his way Campo was just some lug-head athlete who had not enjoyed the most enlightened possible environment as a footballer. Have people forgotten he was coached by one of Australia's foremost experts on women in the workplace, Alan Jones? Not that Campese suggested women rugby writers be placed in a hessian bag and taken out to sea. He strikes me as more of a canvas man.

Yet, typically, my thin-skinned fellow sportswriters jumped to the defence of a fellow ''rugby writer''. The sports editors are the worst. Not only have they sent a woman ''cricket writer'' to Perth, they're putting her stories in the paper.

Luckily, they carry a byline so readers are warned it is the work of a woman who should be massaging Peter Siddle's sore shoulders, not assessing whether they were at the correct angle at point of delivery. Otherwise, you couldn't differentiate them from the stories of a proper, male cricket reporter.

The same thing is happening on TV. You can't turn on an A-League game or even the NRL without some woman giving an opinion or conducting an interview. Yet none of them are able to entertain us with a hilarious, testosterone-soaked anecdote from the sheds, or put a comradely arm around the shoulder of an ex-teammate accused of some alcohol-fuelled atrocity and assure him ''everyone's behind you, mate''.

What's that? Most male sportswriters haven't played top-flight sport either? Yeah, sure. But, if not for lack of courage, athleticism, wit, reflexes and muscle, we could have. Besides, athletes don't try to humiliate us in the change rooms by walking past naked. See the respect we blokes get?

But I'm probably wasting my breath. Campo makes a terrific point and all people can say is: Too sleazy, Campese.

Way things are going, soon we'll have women writing about boxing. Then who will put on the skimpy swimsuit and let us know which round comes next?

Email - rhinds@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Twitter -@rdhinds