“A player will play a worldie of a pass or make a stunning challenge and that’ll end up on social media,” says the Women’s Super League referee Emily Heaslip. “That doesn’t happen for us. There’s never going to be a clip of a referee, talking about a fantastic decision that’s been made. Football doesn’t work like that, and that’s fine, it’s right. We understand that the game is not about us, but it means we’ve got to find our own ways of being happy with performances while also blocking out the noise when people are quick to judge when things don’t go so well.”
Being a referee is extraordinarily difficult, a mental and physical challenge akin to the niche sport chess boxing, where a round of boxing is followed by a round of chess. Then, there is the scrutiny. Make a mistake and the spotlight can be brutal. To be a referee you have to be made of strong stuff, embodying mental toughness on the pitch and maintaining it off the pitch.
To mark Friday’s World Mental Health Day, the Guardian joined Heaslip, one of Professional Game Match Officials’ (PGMO’s) women’s select group officials and a member of Fifa’s international list, for a walk with her four-year-old dog, Bonnie, on Felixstowe beach, to look behind the whistle and explore what it takes to be a referee.
Heaslip is in her second year as a full-time professional and that step was “a complete game changer,” she says. She had not considered a future in refereeing. Heaslip was a player, including in the second tier with Watford, and referees were an irritation. She was convinced she could do a better job. Then the captains of each WSL2 club were asked to be a manager in a five-a-side tournament between different stakeholders in the game.
“I was a manager on the day and there were female referees there,” she says. “I had a little chat with them and they said: ‘You have to get into refereeing, it’s so good.’ All I was thinking is that referees annoy me and they don’t even know what a foul is these days.”
Soon after, her local county Football Association put on an all-female refereeing course and Heaslip signed up: “The rest is kind of history.” Heaslip was juggling, refereeing on a Saturday, playing on a Sunday, picking up the whistle again on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes playing on Wednesday nights too. “It was overlapping and intense,” she says. “At the time, I wasn’t really enjoying playing any more – it became a bit of a chore. Eventually I stopped playing and my weekends filled up with refereeing opportunities.”
What is so good about it? How does refereeing overtake playing as the passion? For many that would seem an alien and confusing concept. “It’s a really strange thing,” Heaslip says. “It’s not one of those things that you look at and you go: ‘What a fantastic career or great opportunity,’ but it really is. Once you get in it, it’s quite addictive. The camaraderie is one thing, but I think the thing that draws me in is that every game, every 90 minutes, is an unknown. Then there’s the satisfaction you get from making the right decisions.”
Part of that satisfaction comes from the planning that goes into ensuring they are in the best possible place to get the right outcome. As well as preparing physically, referees review clips to spot themes, errors and positives. Then there is the research into the teams: positions, styles of play, types of movement, favoured formations, how players do and don’t react to different things, and more.
They have to process incidents with that context in mind while being ready to disregard it. At the same time they are communicating with the rest of their team of officials and with players, interpreting the rules and implementing them.
“You’re working under pressure all the time … trying to identify clues and information that help me make the right decisions. The brain is constantly spinning and you’re always thinking about what decision you’re going to make and whether it is right for the game. What’s expected in this moment? Am I fatigued? Am I having to work hard? Am I in the right position? It’s endless.”
Coming together as a group, be it in camps multiple times a year or online more regularly, is important. “There’s always going to be an element of vulnerability involved in that,” adds Heaslip. “We’re strong enough to recognise if that’s us on the screen being shown making a poor decision it’s only going to benefit others and ensure that decision is not replicated somewhere else. It’s not comfortable but it becomes part of the job and we’re all supportive and respectful when we start talking about and dissecting the clips.” The key is “parking it and moving on”.
An Instagram account for family and friends is Heaslip’s only social media involvement, but even then the digital wall she has built can be breached. That happened after Heaslip’s well-documented second yellow card for Alex Greenwood for time-wasting, 38 minutes into Manchester City’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea in 2023. Lots was said in the media and on social media. “The amount of people that checked in on me at that time was quite alarming really,” she says. “It was because so much was being written. I don’t follow accounts that will expose me to what people are saying on social media so it was only the checking in that alerted me to how big it must be getting. I do have BBC Sport on Instagram and they posted screenshots of multiple quotes from different people about my decision. At that point I thought: ‘Gosh, the only platform I’m on which doesn’t highlight scrutiny and it still appears and slaps me straight in the face.’”
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Referees had been told before the season to be firmer on time-wasting. The problem with new or firmer rules is that referees cannot prepare for every scenario in which they should or shouldn’t be enforced. Sometimes, inevitably, and likely regretfully, there will be some level of trial and error.
“My interpretation in that moment ended up with that card being given,” Heaslip says. “What people don’t seem to realise is that there is context behind decisions like that and guidance that we’ve been given, but they react and forget there’s a human being involved.”
When these storms around decisions blow up, referees have to focus on controlling how they respond to it mentally. PGMO’s department of sport psychology has grown to help and there are numerous ways referees can reach out for support within the organisation.
Heaslip’s main escape from living and breathing football is walking Bonnie. “You remember that there’s more to life than people running around a bit of green, kicking the ball and blowing a whistle,” says Heaslip. “What fans have got to realise is we don’t make errors deliberately. None of us go out to intentionally make an error – it feels rubbish. The drive home is so much longer and worse when there’s errors in a game, and it’s hard to come around from them. We reflect, we learn, we look at why we’ve got things wrong and we need to remember that it’s human nature to make mistakes. It will happen, regardless of how much work you put into preparation.”
The subjectivity of refereeing decisions is also part of the beauty of the game. “It’s an opinion sport,” says Heaslip. “That’s never going to change and I think that’s healthy; it’s what fans want, it brings people together, gives them something to connect over, to disagree over, and almost every decision will split a room.”
What about accusations of bias? “No referee is biased. It just doesn’t happen – the brain just can’t work that quickly. I couldn’t process what colour is what or which team is which quickly enough to be biased. I’ve got too much else in my head to be able to process that. I’m just looking at where the leg goes, where the ball goes and whether it is a foul or not.”
