“I was at the London 2012 Olympics, the pinnacle of my career, and I had the worst experience of refereeing I’ve ever had,” says former New Zealand captain Rebecca Smith. “I thought, ‘It can’t be possible that the game is developing at such a quick speed and the standard of refereeing is just not there’.”
Advertisement
As a player and even a captain, referees didn’t enter Smith’s orbit. “I didn’t see them,” she tells The Athletic. “They weren’t on my radar, they were just there.”
It was that frustrating Olympic experience and a chance meeting with Bibiana Steinhaus-Webb, a former Bundesliga referee and now the first women’s select group director at the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), that changed Smith’s perspective on refereeing. Steinhaus-Webb told Smith she should go into refereeing when she retired from playing. Smith wasn’t sold on the idea, but when she hung up her boots in 2013 and started working at FIFA, she recognised the “global issue” of “substandard” match officiating in women’s football.
A decade later, despite improvements, officiating is still not keeping pace with the evolution of women’s professional football, partly due to the game’s lack of investment into training and resources.
Last weekend saw some big officiating errors in the Women’s Super League (WSL). West Ham United manager Rehanne Skinner said she’s “getting a bit sick” of incorrect decisions after Riko Ueki’s equaliser against Chelsea was declared offside despite replays showing she had been a couple of yards onside. Manchester City’s opener against Manchester United should have been disallowed, with replays showing Bunny Shaw was offside in the build-up.
“If referees aren’t up to the same standard as the players, the medical, coaching, facilities — we talk about all of those sexy things — it’s not a good game to watch,” says Smith. “It’s not that they’re not good referees, they just haven’t had the proper training to be at the top level. Referees are not inherently bad.”
For the last two seasons, the Champions League winner has brought football insights from the player’s perspective as part of PGMOL’s efforts to support women’s select group officials. “Officials are trained to look at football from a referee standpoint,” Smith explains. “It’s a case of helping them see what’s going on from a player and team perspective; tactics, patterns of play.” The rationale is that if referees can read the game well, they can anticipate what is going to happen.
Advertisement
Smith’s involvement, which we will discuss in more detail, is just one part of the training offered to the 75 officials. While all are professional in their approach, just 15 are on professional contracts, with many juggling other jobs.
So what kind of training do referees working in the women’s game receive? The Athletic went to a referees camp to find out.
As a drone flies overhead to capture footage, up to 75 officials dressed in black, with yellow and red cards tucked into their pockets and whistles to hand, take to Loughborough University pitches to conduct a selection of training drills as part of their fourth and final camp of the season.
Accompanied by a team of support staff, including coaches, analysts, psychologists and sports scientists, Saturday’s task is to put into practice the theory sessions on positioning and movement and performance psychology they received the evening before.
Steinhaus-Webb and her team of analysts design drills according to identified areas of improvement. Saturday’s sessions focus on recent recurring incidents that need to be addressed, such as the referee being hit by the ball, penalty decisions and fouls occurring near the penalty area line. As we approach the business end of the season where tensions run high, Steinhaus-Webb emphasises how crucial it is to get those decisions right.
The drills aim to replicate live game scenarios, which is not easy without elite players. In one drill, officials must make penalty decisions having sprinted from the halfway line to the penalty area where they view a screen showing incidents from the National Women’s Soccer League. Steinhaus-Webb is looking at their running speed — the quicker they reach the screen, the more action they see — their body language and the conviction with which they make the call. Their decisions are video recorded and reviewed in the afternoon.
Advertisement
Another drill focuses on deciding if the incident occurs inside or outside the penalty area. To try to replicate a game situation, referee coaches drop the ball near the box. Officials have to think about the angle of their run to get the best viewing position while also avoiding mannequins, representing players, who may be in their way.
Assistant referees, meanwhile, are calling offsides, focusing on players (or, in this case, referees acting as them) who are close to the touchline and those afar. Every decision is reviewed on a laptop with an analyst. Other drills focus on speed and agility, looking at stride length, acceleration and footwork patterns such as sidestepping and backpedalling.
The final drill concentrates on the official’s positioning between the defensive and midfield lines, which grow tighter as play approaches the penalty area. The aim is to read the game, sweeping behind the players, shuffling across when the ball switches quickly and trying not to get in the way of play. Steinhaus-Webb assesses if the official’s shoulders are open, to ensure the penalty area is in vision, while Smith focuses on the official’s anticipation of play.
“If the player is not going to take on someone one-v-one, but they’re going to play it back out, then the referee knows that they can drop off and get out of the passing lanes,” says Smith. “The big point is making sure they’re on top of the game, in the right place at the right time, but not interfering.”
That may sound obvious but some officials may not have played growing up and such movement is crucial to allow the play to flow.
After lunch, Smith presents her classroom session on football insights. Key topics include officials adapting according to teams’ patterns of play, transitions, the defensive back line’s positioning and play in and around the penalty area.
Given the increasing pace of the women’s game, officials have to keep up, especially when teams quickly transition from defence to attack. For the officials that means sprinting faster and less time to make decisions. Recognising certain trigger points, however, can enable referees to be more proactive with their positioning.
Advertisement
In a recent game, Stacey Pearson, a regular WSL referee on a professional contract, anticipated a full-back playing a long diagonal pass by looking at their body shape, an insight discussed at a previous camp.
“Straight away I thought, ‘That’s going to be a long ball, I need to get moving’,” she tells The Athletic. “Rather than being reactive, I’m moving earlier than I would have if I hadn’t known that little nugget of information. That (body shape) is not something I’m going to see on a highlight reel.”
Smith also draws attention to instances when referees were close to the attacking play to make big calls but blocked passing options when top teams efficiently recycled the ball around the edge of the box.
Studying teams’ nuances is part of a referee’s preparation. Pearson, a mother of two young children and a part-time PE teacher and head of Year 11, starts her preparation at 6.15am on Monday by watching the BBC’s Women’s Football Show with her two-year-old child. After her appointment is confirmed at 4pm on the same day, she will rewatch the highlights of the two teams she is refereeing the upcoming weekend.
The 36-year-old, who used to play for Yeovil Town in the second tier of the women’s game, then delves deeper into the video clip bank, going back over the last two or three games, and notes on her phone the number of offsides, yellow cards, the nature of fouls and how they regain possession. Pearson shares the pointers with her refereeing team (two assistants and a fourth official) in a WhatsApp group a day or two before the game so it’s fresh in their minds. Meanwhile, an assistant referee such as Hannah Gardner, who balances her officiating alongside studying for her degree in sports therapy at Edge Hill University, hones in on how teams set up for goal kicks, corners and attacking free kicks.
Pearson likes to know who the key players and goalscorers are as well as relevant off-field matters such as the transfer window and how it affects a team’s formation. With the help of data packs, officials prepare using the information available but are conscious to keep it simple and not prejudge. “I can quite easily put it to one side and strip it back,” says Pearson, who notes the importance of being adaptable, especially in pressure moments when adrenaline is running high.
Such in-depth preparation is a far cry from when Pearson first started officiating a decade ago when women’s game highlights were not even available.
“I’ve evolved with it,” says Pearson. “The terminology has changed: low block, high press, they’re terms that weren’t around when I was playing. Refereeing has developed at a slower rate but we’re going in the right direction.”
Advertisement
As a former footballer, Smith also shares her insight on managing players and the need for communication and proactive intervention to defuse situations.
“There’s respect for referees if they’re respectful to players,” Smith tells The Athletic. “If they understand players, how and when to speak to them, you have a better relationship.
“Some players don’t want to talk when they play and that’s cool. It’s about reading (the situation). If you have a strong captain, you can talk to them and say, ‘Hey, your number seven is close to a yellow card, you might want to calm her down’. That’s helpful for a captain.”
“Referees can be tough but also empathetic. There’s a lot more respect when they admit their mistakes. We forget that players and managers make loads of mistakes but when the referees do, all hell breaks loose.”
Pearson agrees open communication and politeness enable mutual understanding. “If I have a positive relationship with a player I am more likely to give them an explanation,” she says. “If they start shouting at me, I’m less likely to talk to them. I always say, ‘I’m happy to talk to you but at a sensible distance and none of this arm waving’.”
There are frustrations when officiating errors are made. Managers have called for the introduction of video assistant referees (VAR) in the past and Marc Skinner reinforced the need for the technology at the weekend.
But PGMOL is not in charge of that decision. “We are here to provide the service and when the competition wants it, we’re ready to do so,” Steinhaus-Webb tells The Athletic. This weekend’s Continental Cup final between Arsenal and Chelsea will have VAR, as did the FA Cup final last year, but there has been no request from the WSL to PGMOL to provide VAR next season.
West Ham’s Skinner, however, believes professionalising referees should be the priority, a sentiment echoed by Aston Villa manager Carla Ward at the start of the season.
“Apologies after the game don’t change the outcome,” Skinner said after West Ham’s 2-0 defeat against Chelsea. “Ultimately, the referees still aren’t (fully) professional, so they’re not in a situation where they are solely focusing on these games. That has got to change.”
Advertisement
Over time, PGMOL expects there to be an increase in the 20 per cent of the cohort who are on professional contracts while Steinhause-Webb believes the women’s select group setup is “incomparable” to before.
“We don’t go out there to make mistakes,” says Pearson, who did her refereeing course while she was still playing. “It made me a better player. I thought I knew everything about football and the laws but I didn’t.”
Pearson would like to see players and managers be “more proactive” about knowing the laws of the game. “If you’re going to moan at me, at least moan at me over the right law,” she says.
“If any player or manager took the laws of the game test, I guarantee you most of them would fail,” says Smith. “That’s not to say players don’t know how to play football but there are very specific laws of the game. Referees are trying to uphold those laws and protect the players. There’s not a proper understanding and appreciation for that from a player, manager and fan perspective.
“If people understood more about referees, what they go through, how hard they train, how challenging it is to make a split-second decision while sprinting, the pressure of crowds… fans would have a better understanding, more compassion towards referees and see them as part of the game rather than as an us versus them. We have the opportunity to shift that culture, specifically in the women’s game.
“They’re human and, yes, they make mistakes — but they’re so important. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t have player safety, we wouldn’t have a game.”
(Top photo: PGMOL)
