I quit my banking career to become rugby ref
Meet Hollie, the financial high-flyer who gambled everything on making her sporting dream come true
THERE is an old adage in rugby that the best referees are those you don’t notice. If so, then the profession’s newest recruit is having a bad first few weeks. Hollie Davidson has scarcely been out of the news in the past couple of weeks although, admittedly, she has not needed to blow her whistle to create a big noise.
At the age of 24, she has been named Scottish Rugby’s first ever female professional referee, in a move that the sport’s governing body hopes could eventually lead to a woman officiating at the top level of the game. The men’s game, that is.
Some old-school club members may splutter into their hip flasks at the thought of a slender-framed young lassie ordering a towering lock to the sin bin for foul play or wading in to some front-row fisticuffs. Surely, only a man can keep two opposing teams in check?
But Miss Davidson is so determined that she will make it that she has given up a job in banking to pursue her dream.
‘I enjoyed refereeing from the moment I picked up the whistle, having made the transition from player to match official,’ she said, during a brief break from her hectic training schedule. ‘I just want to see how far I can go in this game.
‘Who knows, maybe one day I might even take charge of a Six Nations match. Fingers crossed.’
As far as her new employers at the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) are concerned, their newest appointment is no mere sop to political correctness – the truth is far more pragmatic than that.
NOT since the great Jim Fleming in the 1990s has Scottish rugby boasted a respected presence in world refereeing. Rob Dickson was the last Scot to take charge in a Six Nations game, in 2004, while no Scottish official was involved at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Now Murrayfield’s high heid yins have decreed that if their best shot at rejoining the referees’ top table happens to be a woman, then so be it.
As the only woman contracted to Scotland’s five-strong elite referees panel, Miss Davidson joins a handful of full-time female rugby refs, including England’s Sara Cox and Amy Perrett of Australia. Perrett nearly quit before she started after enduring constant sexual barracking from the crowd.
‘I’ve not encountered any sexism so far,’ insists Miss Davidson, who mostly works on the women’s World Sevens circuit.
‘In women’s sevens, it is the norm to get a female referee. In the men’s sevens, it is becoming more common.
‘Male players may feel a bit like, there’s a woman on the park, they have to be a bit more courteous,’ she adds.
‘I guess it’s good for the game but it should be no different from if it was a guy refereeing. It should just be on how well you refereed the game.’ She confesses that as a nippy little half-back in her playing days, she sometimes ‘gave the ref some gyp’, adding: ‘I am probably going to have to work on developing a thicker skin, but it goes with the territory.
‘Every decision you make, one team’s going to love it and the other’s going to hate it.
‘You want to facilitate the game and not dictate it. If you go unnoticed then you’ve done your job.’
But what about the sheer physicality of what is, after all, a bruising contact sport? Has she ever had to break up a fight?
‘I’ve not, thankfully,’ she says. ‘If it did kick off, I think you’ve got to just deal with what’s in front of you, and we have assistant referees on hand to help out.’
Has she sent anyone off? ‘Yellow cards are quite regular in Sevens so that’s not been an issue. But red cards, no, not yet.’
It is a long way from her childhood in Aboyne, on Royal Deeside – not known as a hotbed of men’s rugby, let alone the women’s game – where she only took up the sport in her mid-teens, a relative late-comer.
Until then, her exposure to rugby had been limited to watching the Six Nations on TV with her rugbymad mother Eileen, 50, and one trip to Murrayfield to see a Scotland international.
While her two older sisters, Carly, 29, and Jodie, 26, had little interest in sport and her younger brother, Reece, she says, ‘doesn’t even play football’, young Hollie was different: ‘I was 15 or 16 before I picked up a rugby ball but I was a keen footballer before that, then tried my hand at a bit of basketball. I just loved sport, so I thought, why not try rugby?’
When a teacher at Aboyne Academy suggested starting up a girls’ and a boys’ team, she signed up – and was immediately hooked.
The girls’ team went on to reach the U18s Youth Cup Final at Murrayfield in 2009, losing to Murrayfield Wanderers.
She played for Edinburgh University while studying for a degree in economic history, and Murrayfield Wanderers, where she caught the eye of the Scotland Women’s U20 selectors.
She played two seasons before graduating to the senior set-up, where days before she was due to win her first cap against the Netherlands, she dislocated her shoulder for the second time. It was the end of her playing career. ‘I was gutted,’ she admits. ‘But you will always face challenges in life and how I overcame this one was to pick up the whistle and try to excel that way.’
Having helped out with refereeing duties on the back pitches at Murrayfield, she was encouraged to sit her qualifying badges. After she impressed in a trial for the women’s World Sevens circuit, the SRU offered her a full-time job.
‘I was in a very comfortable position in my banking career and refereeing was something I did on the side, but when the SRU came calling, I grabbed the chance with both hands.’
Her days are now filled with intensive fitness training to ensure she can keep up with the high-tempo modern game, scanning TV reviews of past performances and brushing up on rugby’s hefty and ever-evolving rule book.
REFEREEINg an 80minute match is a very different challenge to playing and, in her view, is ‘probably as stressful as a full day’s work in the office’.
This summer she will criss-cross the world, officiating on the women’s sevens circuit in Canada, France, Russia and China, before returning to the domestic game to resume her ascent through amateur men’s rugby.
Intriguingly, one of her current coaches is South African Craig Joubert, who needs no introduction to Scotland fans as the man who wrongly awarded a last-gasp penalty to Australia in a 2015 World Cup quarter-final, gifting the Wallabies a one-point win over Scotland at Twickenham.
Joubert compounded his error by sprinting from the field at the final whistle without shaking hands with players from either side. It is a chastening story that Miss Davidson is only too aware of, but far too diplomatic to comment on publicly.
‘Craig has been a great addition; he is very, very good,’ she enthuses. Sure, but has that match ever come up? ‘No, never,’ she laughs.
Now that her hobby has become her job, what does she do to relax? ‘I enjoy doing yoga and I have lots of friends outside rugby, which allows me to switch off and get some normal chat.’
She may find herself under greater public scrutiny the higher she climbs up the ladder of success but her ambition remains undimmed.
‘I would love to make the 2020 Olympics with the women’s sevens and then progress into the men’s elite game,’ she says. ‘But we have to see how the season goes, how I’m performing.’
She will be only 30 by the time of the 2023 Rugby World Cup and 34 by the time the 2027 tournament is staged. If a level playing field really is opening up for match officials, what price on a Scot – and a woman – officiating at one of those finals? Or in the final itself?
‘Ha, you never know,’ she laughs. ‘You never know.’
As ever, the referee has the last word.