{"id":492167,"date":"2026-03-24T07:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492167\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T07:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:21:08","slug":"tara-jones-to-be-first-woman-to-referee-in-super-league-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/492167\/","title":{"rendered":"Tara Jones to be first woman to referee in Super League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tara Jones will become the first woman to take charge of a men&#8217;s Super League game after being appointed to referee Saturday&#8217;s match between Wigan Warriors and Huddersfield Giants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 29-year-old refereed her first Challenge Cup game back in 2018 and was appointed to the Rugby Football League [RFL] group of full-time match officials at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In March 2018, Jones became the first female on-field match official in the men&#8217;s Super League as an in-goal judge as Wigan defeated Wakefield 30-18 at the Brick Community Stadium.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier this season, she became the first woman to referee a game involving a men&#8217;s Super League side, taking charge of Wakefield&#8217;s 82-6 victory at Swinton Lions in the Challenge Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A former England and St Helens hooker, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-league\/articles\/c62mvjllelno\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jones stepped down from playing duties<\/a> in 2024 to become a full-time referee following Saints&#8217; defeat by York Valkyrie in that year&#8217;s Women&#8217;s Super League Grand Final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She was made an MBE for services to rugby league, as a referee, in the 2026 New Year&#8217;s Honours list &#8211; an award she will officially receive on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was a bit shocked when I found out,&#8221; Jones told the RFL about her weekend assignment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tara Jones will become the first woman to take charge of a men&#8217;s Super League game after being&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-492167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}