Women’s football is making great strides but it’s still lagging in one area – top class referees

HUGE strides are being made to grow the women’s game but there is one area that is lagging in the dark ages — referees.

While Arsenal won bragging rights in North London in front of a league record crowd of 38,262 last Sunday — Chelsea and Manchester United were battling over a controversial penalty decision at Kingsmeadow.

Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 thanks to a controversial penaltyCredit: Prime Media

United boss Casey Stoney was fuming at Jack Packman — the THIRD replacement ref that day after two other officials pulled out.

She slammed his “90-minute poor performance,” accused him of booking the wrong player, gifting Chelsea a penalty and claimed he even apologised to her after the match.

Yet Chelsea chief Emma Hayes has defended the officials and believes it is a club’s duty to invest more into the issue.

She said we need to protect our refs, that it is easy to pick on them and managers have a job to stop slaughtering them — and I’m totally on board with that.

You cannot expect officials to be making spot-on decisions every time, when they are so underfunded in the Women’s Super League.

England’s highest-ranked female referee Rebecca Welch juggles a 30-hour week working for the NHS with officiating the top tier of women’s football for £110 a game.

Welch will referee a game in the south of England and it can be 2am before she makes it to bed in the North East.

Then she is often up at 5am the next morning for her day job — we have to give these officials credit.

Our game is constantly progressing with so much quality and talent, so make officials fully professional, pay them more.

Female official Sian Massey-Ellis is in the select group in the men’s game.

It is vital the FA invests in more areas, other than the players, because a National League ref isn’t going to match up with a world-class female footballer. We saw in the World Cup that female players can be intimidating and aggressive — it’s nothing new so why isn’t the WSL prepared for it?

The benches were going mad at Kingsmeadow. People say there is less remonstration and fire in women’s football but this season shows it is alive and kicking.

Clearly the FA has got to support officials with the correct training and funding so they can cope when tempers flare.

In August, the FA announced the Premier League’s referee evaluation scheme would be used in the WSL to improve officiating standards — because every club in the league had raised it as a concern.

The FA women’s refereeing chief Joanna Stimpson said  in February she wanted  full-time refs in the league by 2025.

But that is a long time away and I hope those higher up can be more ambitious.

Arsenal legend and FA director of the women’s game, Kelly Smith has said the WSL salary cap may be raised to attract world-class talent to England.

This is massively positive for the  stability of the WSL.

We need the big names on our shores to pump the funds into our league to keep improving all aspects of the game.

After my sizzling Paso Doble in Blackpool I was on the train back keen to catch the North London derby.

But my dance partner Neil Jones had to  stop me in my tracks and say ‘Alex you are burnt out just watch it on  TV’.

Spurs are the ones to watch today against Everton.

Tottenham’s joint head coach Karen Hills has been with the club for 12 years and I heard her saying she used to make sandwiches for the team and drive the mini-bus, back in the day.

She must have had shivers seeing her team walk out in front of league record of nearly 40,000 people last week  — I hope that game has a ripple effect on the future of the women’s football.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk