{"id":559590,"date":"2026-03-23T19:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/559590\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T19:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:18:12","slug":"tara-jones-to-be-first-female-to-referee-in-super-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/559590\/","title":{"rendered":"Tara Jones to be first female to referee in Super League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tara Jones will become the first woman in charge of a men’s Super League game after being appointed to referee Saturday’s clash between Wigan Warriors and Huddersfield Giants.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old took charge of her first Challenge Cup game back in 2018 and was appointed to the Rugby Football League [RFL] full-time match officials squad at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

In March 2018 Jones became the first female on-field match official in the men’s Super League as an in-goal judge as Wigan defeated Wakefield 30-18 at the Brick Community Stadium.<\/p>\n

Earlier this season, Jones became the first female to referee a game involving a men’s Super League side, taking charge of Wakefield’s 82-6 victory at Swinton Lions in the Challenge Cup.<\/p>\n

A former England and St Helens hooker, Jones stepped down from playing duties<\/a> in 2024 to become a full-time referee following Saints’ defeat by York Valkyrie in that year’s Women’s Super League Grand Final.<\/p>\n

She was made a MBE for services to rugby league football, as a referee, in the 2026 New Year’s Honours list – an award she will officially receive on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“I was a bit shocked when I found out,” Jones told the RFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tara Jones will become the first woman in charge of a men’s Super League game after being appointed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-559590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559590","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=559590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}