A tribute to Sian
Each time she stepped onto a football pitch, she put herself in view of people who desperately wanted her not to be there.
It's amazing that football continues, given how much of a shit deal referees have. It's amazing that women go on, without revolting, given how much of a shit deal they continue to have. Then at the heart of that honking Venn diagram, you find Sian Massey-Ellis, THE pioneer of female refereeing.
Sian Massey-Ellis officiated her first Premier League game in 2010.
In 2010, Akon was trying to find the words to describe a girl without being disrespectful, and landing on 'Damn, she's a sexy bitch'. At the start of that year, we didn't have the Equality Act, and it was perfectly legal to tick off a woman for daring to breastfeed in public. We still had Nuts and Zoo and the menstrual cup was just a mythical creature, for most, at this point. Two years later I would watch Jess Ennis boss the long jump and wonder how in hell her sanitary pads survived all that sand.
Sian Massey, meanwhile, was facing crowds of men ready to undermine her for the slightest flutter of her flag.
Fast forward to 2023. When I came back from Australia, after everyone had got behind England's women's football team and the Lionesses nearly bloody won the World Cup, I thought that things had changed.
(As an aside, to clock how exceptional my optimism around the liberation of women was but three years ago, relative to today's, makes me feel old and tired).
I went to Elland Road at the start of the 2023-2024 season. There was a female assistant referee on the near side and from two rows behind me I heard a fellow fan shout, 'this isn't hockey, love!' when a decision went against Leeds.
Discrimination arouses a strange conflict of feelings. You are simultaneously crushed and awoken. You feel like the shit on the bottom of a white Samba, and the floodlights blazing above you. Like death and like dynamite.
Obviously, I didn't challenge because, if there's one thing worse than acknowledging a single man's misogyny, it's having your worst suspicions confirmed as everyone closes rank around him. Life is too short to pile hassle upon hassle when you can just swallow the discomfort and move on (thinking of the incident again, at intervals, for several years after).
That's where me and the likes of Massey-Ellis differ. Where some of us keep our heads down, she opts to stick out, waving her fluorescent checkered flag as she does so, as if to say, 'I'm here and you can't make me go away'.
Each time she stepped onto a football pitch, she put herself in view of people who desperately wanted her not to be there, and chose to withstand the judgement, the comments, the oppression.
Refereeing never looked much fun to me but she must have bloody loved it to go through all that, and persist. At least such pioneers as Jill Scott and Fara Williams had each other. Refereeing is a famously lonely vocation, and there's still so few women on pitches on Premier League matchdays.
But maybe not for long.
Today, Sian announced that she is hanging up her flag to take on a role with the FA which will help to bring more girls and women into refereeing.
"If my journey has helped change perceptions, open doors or inspire even one young person to believe they belong in the game, then I will consider that one of my greatest achievements," she said.
Good on ya gal.