PGMOL may just be playing a joker with Rebecca Welch appointment
So what happens if Rebecca Welch makes a mistake when she takes charge of Fulham against Burnley? A blunder is always possible, what with Welch being human as well as female.
Will (male) players surround her, screaming in her face? Will (male) managers confront her, ranting like madmen, at the final whistle? Will the (predominantly male) crowd inform her she isn’t fit to referee with passing references to her bedroom pastimes?
It is impossible to vouch for the paying public – when Welch refereed Birmingham City’s Championship game against Sheffield Wednesday two 17-year-olds were arrested for alleged misogynistic chanting.
It followed problems of a similarly sexist nature on a previous visit to St Andrew’s.
But my expectation is that the professionals will respond positively to Welch’s history-making presence. When England played Andorra two years ago in a World Cup qualifier with an all-female officiating team it was striking how little dissent there was.
Admittedly it wasn’t exactly a pressure cooker occasion – England strolled home 5-0 – but the respect shown to referee Kateryna Monzul was noticeable.
The alternative is particularly distasteful. Imagine for a second what it would have looked like if Erling Haaland had been towering over a female referee, rather Simon Hooper, at the Etihad a fortnight ago and hollering at her.
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It looked ugly enough as it was but my suspicion is that, however bad the howler, there would have been something inside Haaland that would have stopped him from going as far.
Men – non-psychopaths anyway – do behave differently in flashpoint situations when confronted by a woman rather than a man. There is no point pretending otherwise.
So in a season when referees are trying to clamp down hard on dissent they might just be playing a joker with this appointment.
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