awarded an MBE for services to rugby union<\/a> in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours list.<\/p>\n“I’d like to thank everyone who has supported my career, I wouldn’t be where I am without the amazing team around me and a group of fantastic colleagues both in England and when travelling around the world,” she added.<\/p>\n
“But most of all I’d like to thank my friends and family \u2013 particularly my mum who has always been my biggest supporter. <\/p>\n
“Being able to referee a game in Exeter, my home town, during last summer’s World Cup was a moment of real pride and amazing to do so in front of people who’ve championed me in my career but not always been able to travel to the far-flung places I’ve worked.<\/p>\n
“I look forward to continuing to referee in our domestic leagues and hopefully continuing to encourage other women to see match officiating as a role for them.”<\/p>\n
Cox refereed the rugby sevens at the 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games – taking charge of the final at the Covid-19 delayed games in Tokyo after officiating in the first-ever Women’s Sevens tournament in Rio de Janeiro five years earlier. <\/p>\n
“Sara has been a true pioneer for match officials and an inspiration to so many,” Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney said.<\/p>\n
“Her professionalism, resilience and passion for the game have broken barriers and demonstrated the path to top level match officiating for women across the world. <\/p>\n
“She deserves huge plaudits for everything she’s achieved in her international career, and we are delighted that she will be continuing to contribute to the English game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cox is also a regular official in Premiership Women’s Rugby as well as the men’s Prem. She was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-423363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}