A Women’s Super League referee says she lost her role as an international official after complaining that a referee coach “manhandled” her at a game.<\/b><\/p>\n
Lisa Benn told an employment tribunal in London on Monday that Steve Child, a Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) coach and former Premier League assistant referee, had “forcefully pushed her”.<\/p>\n
But once she raised a complaint she said in a witness statement that PGMOL did not recommended her as highly as it had done in the past, which cost her a place on Fifa’s international referee list.<\/p>\n
Benn, 34, says she had been told by the organisation’s chief refereeing officer, Howard Webb, and his wife Bibi Steinhaus-Webb – then head of women’s referees – she would not be punished for coming forward.<\/p>\n
PGMOL investigated the complaint but found Child’s behaviour did not meet the threshold for disciplinary action.<\/p>\n
Monday’s hearing was told the alleged incident happened at a PGMOL-organised tournament to train staff on video assistant referees (VAR), which was not in use in the women’s game, in March 2023.<\/p>\n
The schedule was delayed following a serious injury, when Benn alleges Child urged her to get a game started promptly, grabbed her arm and “forcefully pushed” her on to the pitch.<\/p>\n
The game she officiated later became heated and Child instructed a fourth official to tell Benn to “kill the game”, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Benn replied by saying “don’t tell me how to referee” and also directing an expletive at Child.<\/p>\n
“I am a trusted referee, I referee at the highest level – this was an under-19s game,” she told the panel.<\/p>\n
“He felt superior, he felt like he could come on and tell me how to referee, he manhandled me on to the field of play – he would never have done that to a male referee,” she added.<\/p>\n
Jesse Crozier, for PGMOL, suggested “he would have put his arm behind you and ushered you on to the pitch at the same time” but Benn rejected this explanation.<\/p>\n
Benn was asked if she had seen him act that way with other referees, and said: “I have to female referees, yes. I haven’t to male referees.”<\/p>\n
At the end of the game Child grabbed her arm and told her “your card has been marked”, she said.<\/p>\n
“He was so angry his eyes were bulging out of his head,” she added.<\/p>\n
Crozier said: “If you had been dragged, grabbed and pushed at a training tournament with dozens and dozens of people, someone would have seen it,” to which Benn disagreed.<\/p>\n
The tribunal continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Women’s Super League referee says she lost her role as an international official after complaining that a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":386376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-386375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115567857732916576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}