‘I’m walking out, checking the nets while Gabby Logan is having her make-up done for the cameras in the corner’ ...how Derbyshire’s top female football ref deals with being on telly - and the abuse that comes with the job
IT’S one of the age-old questions of football: who would want to be a referee?
For many of us up and down Derbyshire, they are sources of anger, confusion and upset, denying our teams that stonewall penalty or sending off your best player.
But for thousands of people across the county and the UK as a whole, refereeing proves to be a fun and enjoyable way of staying involved in the sport many of us love.
Now Derbyshire’s top female football referee, Georgia Ball, has lifted the lid on life at the top levels of the game, how she deals with abuse and what she would say to others considering taking up the whistle.
“I remember when I was younger, I was only about 15, a guy was stood on the sideline and started chanting a well-known tune that rhymes with ‘banker.’ His wife turned around and replied to him, ‘How can she be one of those? She’s a woman.’ That always sticks in my head as quite funny.
“You’re always going to get shouted at. Because I’ve played and grown up around football, as much as we shouldn’t accept outright abuse, you have got to accept that crowds and players get passionate about football, but I’ve never had something where I’ve felt I need to do something about it afterwards.”
Georgia qualified aged just 14 in 2011, taking the qualification during the October half term at her high school, Brookfield Community School in Brampton, Chesterfield.
She was the only girl out of around 20 people on the course but was encouraged by a female tutor who led the lessons and in just 10 years she has climbed the ladder to become one of the top officials in the women’s game in the country, out of around 30,000 referees in England.
Alongside her day job as an accountant at BHP, she is a 2W referee, meaning she acts as an assistant referee – or lineswoman, in common parlance – on the Barclay’s Women’s Super League, the top women’s league in England, and referees in the second tier, the FA Women’s Championship.
In the men’s game she is a level four referee, meaning she can referee men’s games in regional leagues across the East Midlands.
But she has come from humble beginnings, starting out as a youth referee in the North Derbyshire Youth Football League, also known as the Rowley’s League.
“I stopped playing football at about 13, because I was very sporty so I couldn’t do everything. Football didn’t make the cut at the time,” she said.
“Brookfield was a very sport-orientated school and the lads had noticed that there was a football refereeing course being put on. They were all doing it, and at the time I thought ‘I like football, I used to play and it’s a bit of extra spending money.’ I spoke to the school, and they were willing to pay for it for me if I agreed to do so many school games.
“It was just me and a load of lads and
older men, and it went from there. It was purely a bit of spending money at first. It was either that or a paper round, and I didn’t like my paper round, I preferred the refereeing. Because I knew a lot of the lads, it wasn’t a daunting experience – I imagine it could be – but I enjoyed it.
“I did youth games locally down the park until I was around 18 or 19. It was always just that bit of extra spending money, just doing it because I like football and I know I can do it. It was when I started work that I sat down and thought, I don’t hate my job – it’s a good job and I like it – but I thought ‘I don’t want to do this and nothing else.’ That’s when I started doing adult games, going for promotion and taking it a bit more seriously. It was never intended to get to where it is now, but it’s just gone on from there.”
She started adult football aged 18, in the Midland Regional Alliance and the Derbyshire Girls and Ladies League, staying there until she was promoted to the Women’s National League, where Derby County Women currently play.
But she was thrown in at the deep end on one men’s game in 2016, when she was forced to referee a game in Chesterfield’s Langer Lane after the scheduled official pulled out.
Georgia’s talent soon attracted attention and she has been coached for five years by Derbyshire-based former Football League referee, Robert Shoebridge, as part of the FA’s Centre of Refereeing Excellence (CORE) programme, who pushed her development in the women’s game.
She has now been a 2W referee for two years, officiating teams including Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield United, with her first season in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
All referees at that level are evaluated in every fixture by an FA observer, and in the WSL every decision is checked and listed as either correct or incorrect on an online system.
Officials find out where they will be headed every Monday for games coming that weekend.
The increased scrutiny has coincided with a huge rise in media attention for the elite women’s game, with the BBC and Sky Sports now showing dozens of games live. So far this season Georgia has already been on TV for Brighton and Hove Albion v Manchester United and Arsenal v Brighton.
Georgia says being watched by television cameras sometimes feels odd, but does not stop her and her colleagues doing their job.
She said: “My whole first year was in really quiet, fan-less stadiums. It was odd, but maybe not a bad thing because it is quite a big step from going from teams that are in local leagues to my first line [assistant referee appointment] on the Super League at Everton, which is crazy when you think the last season I was refereeing locally, and now I’m refereeing Everton and it’s on BBC Sport and Sky.
“The scrutiny, with the increased media coverage, is the biggest demand, I’d say. No one wants to be on Twitter and told they got something wrong. All of a sudden in a season we’ve gone to clubs commentating on things on Twitter to being live on Sky Sports. Especially now the clubs are professional, we’re expected to match that. They’re playing for their jobs, and mistakes can cost a lot of money and possibly jobs.
“Now I’m walking out, checking the nets and Gabby Logan is having her makeup done for the cameras in the corner. It’s still a bit surreal, but we try not to think about it as we just have to view it as a game.”
But she also says that being a female has not been a barrier, at the same time as Rebecca Welch – one of the highestlevel female match officials in England – is set to make history in January as she becomes the first female to take charge of a men’s FA Cup third-round match – Birmingham City’s home tie against Plymouth Argyle on Saturday.
Georgia says there is no distinction between men and women in the women’s game, and firmly believes that “we are not just there because we’re female”.
She adds that while there is occasionally surprise when she referees a men’s game, it does not cause a problem and that she is merely seen as a referee once the game starts.
Her love for refereeing stems from a love of football, having been a regular attendee and season ticket holder at Chesterfield, along with her footballmad family who are “really supportive” of what Georgia does.
Georgia’s grandmother still watches every game she is involved in on TV or YouTube, which can be as far afield as Durham in the north and Lewes on the south coast.
“I think they’re just waiting for me to get a game abroad somewhere, that’s what they’re hoping for,” she adds.
Her goals are to be promoted to a 1W referee, which means she can officiate teams including Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City in the WSL, and FIFA refereeing beyond that, meaning she can referee continental and international fixtures.
But she also has a message for anyone around Derbyshire considering taking up the whistle: “go for it”.
“From my point of view, there are no negatives to it. For me, football – especially women’s football – will only get bigger and the support the FA and County FAs have is getting better and it’s a really good support network,” she says.
“There are plenty of people who will support you, like I have had. Even if it’s just a case of staying local, the benefits you get are brilliant. There is the spending money, but also going out and about, and there is the social side of it as well.
“No one sees you as any different from anyone else. Definitely go for it, don’t hesitate.”
You can become a referee by completing one of Derbyshire FA’s basic referee courses. More information can be found at www.derbyshirefa. com/referees/development-andcourses/the-fa-referees-course
The scrutiny...is the biggest demand. No one wants to be on Twitter and told they got something wrong.
Georgia Ball