A leading official has told a tribunal that a football referee coach \u201cforcefully pushed her\u201d and that his behaviour was influenced by her gender. Lisa Benn, 34, claims she was harassed and unfairly lost her position as an international referee after raising a complaint.<\/p>\n
The Women\u2019s Super League official had complained that she was manhandled on a pitch in 2023 by Steve Child, a Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) coach and former Premier League assistant referee.<\/p>\n
Giving evidence to a south London employment tribunal on Monday, she alleged Child also told her \u201cyour card has been marked\u201d. A PGMO investigation found Child\u2019s behaviour did not meet the threshold for disciplinary action.<\/p>\n
Benn alleges that the organisation\u2019s chief refereeing officer, Howard Webb, and his wife, Bibiana Steinhaus-Webb, who was then its head of women\u2019s referees, said she would not be punished for coming forward. However, she wrote in her witness statement that, after her complaint, PGMO did not recommend her as highly as they had previously done. Benn claimed that this cost her a prestigious place on Fifa\u2019s international referee list.<\/p>\n
A PGMO-organised tournament took place to train staff on VAR, which was not yet used in the women\u2019s game, on 29 March 2023. The schedule was delayed by a serious injury and Benn said that Child adopted a leadership role but \u201cwas flustered, he was stressed, he was charging around all over the place\u201d.<\/p>\n
Benn alleges that the coach grabbed her arm and \u201cforcefully pushed\u201d her on to the pitch. She accepted that Child said \u201csomething along the lines of \u2018come on let\u2019s go\u2019\u201d to speed up the start of the game, and said she responded by putting her palm up and telling him to \u201cchill\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jesse Crozier, for PGMO, put to her: \u201cIn saying \u2018come on let\u2019s go\u2019, he would have put his arm behind you and ushered you on to the pitch at the same time.\u201dBenn rejected the claim, saying: \u201cThat is definitely not what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201ctemperature was high\u201d during the match and Child instructed a fourth official, Ruby Sykes, to tell Benn to \u201ckill the game\u201d, the tribunal heard. This prompted Benn to say \u201cdon\u2019t tell me how to referee\u201d and \u201cfuck off\u201d, which was directed at Child but spoken through a communications system to Sykes, the panel was told.<\/p>\n
Benn said: \u201cI\u2019ve never had somebody shout down the comms to tell me how to referee \u2013 I am a trusted referee, I referee at the highest level, this was an under-19s game.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cHe felt superior, he felt like he could come on and tell me how to referee, he manhandled me on to the field of play \u2013 he would never have done that to a male referee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crozier put to her: \u201cYou appear to take umbrage at the refereeing coach giving you coaching directions while you were refereeing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benn said: \u201cIt was a distraction because, as you mentioned, the game was difficult, the game was challenging \u2013 there was a lot going on in the game that required my attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benn said she was also adjusting to \u201cnew VAR principles\u201d that were unfamiliar to her. She became emotional as she later told the panel: \u201cHe made me feel inferior, as a referee and as a human being, and that\u2019s not OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she had seen him act in that way to other referees, she said: \u201cI have to female referees, yes. I haven\u2019t to male referees.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The official said there was a \u201cmass brawl\u201d at the end of the game triggered by one player head-butting another.<\/p>\n
She said Child then grabbed her arm and told her \u201cyour card has been marked\u201d and \u201cyou\u2019re bloody-minded\u201d. She added: \u201cHe was so angry his eyes were bulging out of his head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benn accepted that in response she \u201cshouted \u2018what is your problem?\u2019 in his direction. \u201cHe didn\u2019t turn around, he just walked off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Crozier put to her: \u201cIf you had been dragged, grabbed and pushed at a training tournament with dozens and dozens of people, someone would have seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said there would have been video recordings of the event but she has not seen any. The barrister said that such an incident \u201cwould have been noticed, would it not?\u201d She said: \u201cNo, I disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tribunal continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leading official has told a tribunal that a football referee coach \u201cforcefully pushed her\u201d and that his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-290401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}