Russell Crowe dumps cheergirls from football club

SYDNEY, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Oscar-winning Hollywood actor and phone-thrower Russell Crowe has revealed a sensitive side, axing scantily-dressed cheerleaders from his Sydney rugby league club because they make men uncomfortable.

Crowe, who co-owns the South Sydney Rabbitohs, one of Australia's oldest rugby league clubs, will replace the cheer girls this season with a drumming band of men and women after his wife Danielle Spencer and other fans complained.

Research, Crowe said, showed fans were uncomfortable going to games with girls on the sidelines dressed in skimpy green, red, white dance costumes.

''It makes women uncomfortable and it makes blokes who take their son to the football also uncomfortable,'' Crowe told Australian media. ''We've talked to a lot of people and everyone sees it as being progressive.'' Crowe, a long-term Rabbitohs fan, bought the cash and win-strapped club in 2006 with Peter Holmes a Court, the scion of one of Australia's wealthiest families.

The actor, who in 2005 pleaded guilty to throwing a faulty telephone handset at a hotel concierge, said wife Spencer liked the idea of percussion band.

''She likes the fact that game day entertainment will be multi-sex,'' he said.

Cheer girl Ashleigh Francis said the cheer squad had only tried to add glamour to the Rabbitohs games.

''Children at the games were constantly approaching us and asking for autographs and photos, and little girls would even ask if they were old enough to be cheergirls too,'' she told the Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper.

REUTERS SY VC1832