Trailblazing referee on her decision to retire, handling the emotions of the job and what the future holds for officiating

There were 15 minutes left before kick-off at the university fixture at the Maiden Castle sports centre in Durham when Rebecca Welch, trying her hand at refereeing for the first time, was perplexed to see there was no sign of nets, corner flags or even any players. Eventually the teams turned up and – having never wanted to become a referee – she decided to persevere with it “just for a few more games” and see what happened. Fast forward 14 years and Welch found herself in floods of tears in a van in Marseille, heading towards the Stade Vélodrome for an Olympic semi-final between Brazil and Spain last month, because she knew that it was going to be the last match she took charge of after a trailblazing career at the elite end of the profession.

“I couldn’t speak to anybody because I was crying,” Welch says. “It was just the emotion. I thought: ‘This is me finishing and nobody knows.’ That was just for me to know but nobody else to know, and I quite like that because I don’t like the attention around it.”