After this incident, the tribunal heard that Benn dropped from fifth to sixth on FIFA’s international officials list, with the governing body only accepting the top five officials on their women’s game list. However, the panel was told the PGMOL had asked for them to take on a sixth for that season. 

Webb said at the hearing that Benn received a lower ranking because she was outperformed by others. 

“It was our honestly held belief that she would be accepted,” said Webb. This was because the growth of the women’s game and the “noises we were hearing” from sports bodies. 

The ex-Premier League referee added: “Unfortunately, highly regrettably, it wasn’t, but unfortunately, compared to the other officials in this ranking, she was correctly placed sixth, based on the performance factors listed and the holistic view we’ve gone through. This is a competitive world in which we work and we need to rank officials against each other. We produce a lot of other really good officials in this country and we are in the difficult task to have to rank them against each other.”