Rebecca Welch will become first ever female Premier League ref later this month
Rebecca Welch will become the first female referee to take charge of a Premier League game.
The 40-year-old official will be the referee for Fulham’s clash with Burnley on December 23 in what will be a groundbreaking moment for English football.
She has already made history in 2021 by taking charge of an EFL game in 2021 and has been a fourth official in the Premier League. Welch was also in the middle for a men's FA Cup fixture in January 2022, as well as overseeing two finals of the women's competition at Wembley - most recently in 2020.
In the same year she was added to FIFA's Elite List of Match Officials, and she took charge of matches both at the Women's European Championship in 2022 and the Women's World Cup In Australia earlier this year.
“I played football and didn’t even think about refereeing until one of my really good friends, who is a referee, refereed us,” she told the Independent last month. “I spent the whole game telling her how to do her job! Her response was, ‘If you think it’s that easy, give it a go’. That’s how it happened and 10 years later here I am.”
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Head of referees Howard Webb said: “I just hope that other people will see the success of these female officials, young girls and young women, and think that refereeing might be for them.
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“Sam being the first black referee in the Premier League since Uriah Rennie back in 2008, again we know he has performed well in the Championship this year at a consistent level and we are confident he will deliver a strong performance.
“The profile of the game will serve as a role model for others in under-represented communities and that is undoubtedly a positive.”
It is a hugely positive moment for English football to have a female referee in the top flight which represents a first. She has worked in the NHS and Webb likened her to French referee Stephanie Frappart who is another ground-breaking female official.
Rebecca Welch has refereed men's games in the EFL and FA CupWebb said: “Rebecca is a really calm focused individual on the field. She does command a lot of respect in a pretty understated way. She has a good reading of the game, she is an accurate decision-maker, a good athlete on the field, too.
“Of course it’s significant in terms of Rebecca being the first female to take the whistle in the Premier League, she was the fourth official a few weeks ago for the first time, and we have lots of talented female officials working in the game.
“We have Kirsty Dowle taking charge of her first Football League game this weekend at Doncaster Rovers, she’s another Fifa-registered official.”
Meanwhile, Sam Allison will become the first black referee to take charge of a Premier League match, when he officiates Sheffield United vs Luton. That will mark the first time a black referee has been given a top-flight match since Uriah Rennie in 2008.
Webb has spoken openly about the need to diversify the list of officials operating within the elite game. Earlier this year, he told “Our commitment is to ensure that opportunities are created to ensure that there's real diversity in the group of decision makers that I lead - and the organisation.”
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On the long wait for Black referee to take charge of a top-flight match, he added: “We clearly don't have the systems in place to allow talent to flourish from all parts of the community. There’s a whole list of officials and it's pretty one dimensional, that can't be right.”
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