Amy Fearn blazing a trail for female referees – not a problem is it?

Amy Fearn

Substitute

In the Championship game between Coventry and Nottingham Forest on Tuesday evening thirty-one year old Amy Fearn made a substitute appearance as the referee. When the original referee, Tony Bates, limped off injured in the seventy-first minute Amy took over.

In an interview with the Football League website Amy talked of her ambition,

“It would be nice to referee in the Premier League one day but obviously the competition is harder. My next promotion target is running the line in that division but I started out as a ref and that is what I love doing. I want to continue being a referee.”

The game itself ended in a slightly surprising 1-0 win to Coventry and Amy described the moment she took control as “very surreal.”

“The decision is made before the game which official will replace the referee in the event of him coming off, so even though I wasn’t the fourth official, I was the most senior so it fell to me to replace Tony. The game stepped up a level when I entered the pitch. Going from the line to the middle is very different. It is the same as a player substitution, there is an extra stimulus in the game and with twenty minutes to go, Forest were desperate to get a goal.”

Amy began refereeing at the age of sixteen and has been running the line in the football league and refereeing in the Blue Square Premier League for the nearly seven years. On average she referees three Blue Square games each month.

She told the Football League website that she hoped that her publicity would be good for the general involvement and acceptance of women in football.

“It can only be a good thing for encouraging more women into the game. There is a great relationship between male and female officials. When the referee came off he told me to stay calm and do my best and it would be great to see more women come into the game. I understand there was a big reaction from the crowd but I don’t remember it at the time. I’m glad there was nothing controversial in that 20 minutes, football should be about the players not the officials.”

Not everyone in football will agree with Amy as there are some slightly archaic views within the game. A couple of years ago the then Luton manager Mike Newell upset half of the population of the world with his reaction when female ref Amy Rayner gave a penalty against his team.

‘She should not be here. I know that sounds sexist, but I am sexist, so I am not going to be anything other than that. We have a problem in this country with political correctness, and bringing women into the game is not the way to improve refereeing and officialdom. It is absolutely beyond belief. When do we reach a stage when all officials are women, then we are in trouble. It is bad enough with the incapable referees and linesmen we have, but if you start bringing in women, you have big problems. It is tokenism, for the politically correct idiots.’

Thankfully there are not too many people with views like those that Mike Newell certainly used to have. Having said that, top level football is still a very male dominated world and it will be difficult for any woman to break into it.

I can’t see why there would be any real objection to women officials in the Premier League. Let’s be honest, there is hardly a weekend passes without a truly horrible decision or two being highlighted. It is not as if everyone in the game is really happy with the current standards.

Surely it is the quality of the refereeing that counts not what gender they are. What do you think?