'Really excited': Rebecca Welch the first female referee appointed to EFL match
When Rebecca Welch blows her whistle at Harrogate Town’s home fixture with Port Vale next Monday, a significant milestone in English football will finally have been reached.
The 37-year-old from County Durham has become the first woman selected to referee a men’s match in the English Football League. It is the highest standard for a female referee yet in the men’s game and, it is hoped, a harbinger of much more progress.
With past accomplishments including refereeing the women’s FA Cup final on two occasions, Welch said her selection was the “biggest achievement” of her 10-year career as a match official.
“I’m really excited and this is what I’ve been working towards,” she said. “In the last 10 years I’ve put a lot of hard work and commitment in and I’ve reaped the rewards from that by getting promoted. To be given this opportunity to work in the EFL is amazing for me.”
Welch said it was only recently that she had come to consider her position as a pioneer. Amy Fearn came on as an injury substitute to referee an
EFL game in 2010, but only Welch has been appointed to take charge of a full match.
“I’d never seen myself as a trailblazer until the last year, where I’ve started to accept it because I think it’s important that people who are fortunate enough to be in my position or similar can show people that this can be done,” she said. “I do think it’s important to show that women who are in the top 1% of their category can proceed to the next level so it definitely makes others down the pyramid look up and know that they can achieve the same.”
Although there are a number of women registered as assistant referees in the EFL, and one – Sian Massey-Ellis – who works in the Premier League and at international club level, there has been concern over the slow rate of progress for female referees in England. A lack of role models is thought to be part of the problem. Welch says it was only a couple of years ago that she was confident enough in her progress up the tiers of the FA’s referee pathway to take a break from her job as an NHS administrator and concentrate full-time on the game.
Last year the chairman of the Referees’ Association, Paul Field, said that female officials suffered because of a previous lack of investment in the women’s game and that it would be a decade before a woman was refereeing a Premier League match.
The Football Association points to an explosion in the number of women referees since the formation of the Women’s Super League, with numbers up 76% between 2016 and 2020 and 2,146 officiating last year at all levels of the game.
Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1 have employed women referees, and Stéphanie Frappart refereed a men’s Champions League match last December. An all-female team from Ukraine took charge of an international between San Marino and Gibraltar last year.