Jones said she began officiating when she was no longer able to play rugby league with boys after coming to the end of an under-11s season.<\/p>\n
“I went over to a girls’ team and back then the opportunities for girls to play rugby were few and far between,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s much better now but that’s why I went into officiating, because I was a bit stubborn and I was told I couldn’t do something within the sport I love.<\/p>\n
“I was like, I will find a different avenue and no one is going to tell me I can’t be involved in this sport at the top level in the boys’ side of it.<\/p>\n
“So I decided to go into officiating and I haven’t looked back.”<\/p>\n
As a player, Jones won a Women’s Super League title, two League Leaders’ Shields and four Challenge Cups before retiring in 2024.<\/p>\n
She has been refereeing in the men’s game for a year and said the players “just see me as another referee”.<\/p>\n
“I think the biggest problem they have, is what do they call me?” she said.<\/p>\n
“I get that question every week and I find it quite funny. I understand they’re used to having male referees and they always address them as ‘sir’.<\/p>\n
“They are only trying to be respectful. I just tell them to call me ‘ref’ or ‘Tara’ and if they do call me ‘sir’ because it’s habit, then don’t worry about it.<\/p>\n
“I’m not offended because I know they’re trying to be respectful and do the right thing.”<\/p>\n
Jones said she hopes she can be a “trailblazer” for young women in rugby league.<\/p>\n
“I try to be and I want to be – I just do what I do and I hope I can inspire young girls,” she added.<\/p>\n
“Just this week I’ve had a message from a young girl who has just started refereeing to say that I’ve inspired her to try it and give it a go.<\/p>\n
“That means a hell of a lot to me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jones said she began officiating when she was no longer able to play rugby league with boys after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-499033","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\/499033","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=499033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}