Premier League's first female ref inducted into Hall of Fame

Feelings on this fair Hall of Fame accolade? Yeah, it's an absolute honour. I think when I first heard about it I kind of looked into it and seeing who'd been inducted into this Hall of Fame before me and seeing the list of names, it was like wow. So yeah, listen, a really proud moment for me and and an honour to be on that list with some fantastic names in football. How does it feel to be thought of as a trailblazer in football? Yeah, I used to be a bit uncomfortable about that, that word, but now I embrace it more because, listen, we want to leave a legacy. We want to inspire more people to get involved in referee and, and if they can use my name to help women and girls get into referee and then then I'm all for it. As long as at some point somebody else takes over that legacy and and carries it on. Yeah, definitely. I think I understood kind of the coverage you got when I did it at Harrogate and then when I did it at Fulham because I was the 1st. But hopefully when the next person does it then then we won't be talking about it as much because we do want to normalise it. We want to make it the norm for a female referee or a system referee to go out on a Saturday and officiate any fixture and there'll be no, there'll be no noise around it apart from the fact that, oh, there's a match official there. There's been so many. I think, you know, 2017 Women's FA Cup final at Wembley was, was amazing. Fast forward to COVID years where we had the FA Cup final again and then Community Shield with no fans in, which was a little bit different this year, Champions League final. Something I think when you get on the UAE for list that is that is the pinnacle of what you want to do. And then obviously finishing my career at the Olympics was just a dream come true. Yeah, I think I am treated differently, but I think in a positive way for me. You know, I always found that especially being involved in the male game, I got a lot less grief off the players than what the men did, which is quite ironic because people would probably think it's the other way around. But listen, I've been involved in the men's game since I started in in the men have been great. Like I say, it's not always the story people want to hear, but I've had a great experience because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have stayed in it as long as I have. And I was, I think, you know, professional referees were working in the elite game. And I think football's always under scrutiny, whether that's referees, whether it's managers, whether it's players, because that's part of football where people are going to scrutinise. When we go out and we give decisions, I think that's just part of the job. But you know, we're well trained, we're well equipped for that. So every game we're going to, we go out and we do an honest day's work and try and make all the right decisions. Some days that doesn't happen, some days it does. But but as referees, that's, you know, that's what we hold ourselves accountable though. Yeah.