Official Kicks: Jenny Pullen (referee, Lincolnshire)

The Official Kicks slot, sponsored by the University of Gloucestershire, carries a first-person account from award-winning Lincolnshire referee Jenny Pullen. She explains that she never played organised football but, having realised at a county show how little she knew of the laws, took a Lincolnshire FA referee course three months later. Pullen now referees men’s and women’s games at open age and Under-18 level, officiating local men’s leagues and women’s football up to Combination level, and this season running the line in WSL2. She recalls a mass confrontation in her first season on the men’s league as her most challenging experience, and receiving the FA Carlsberg Women’s Referee of the Year award from Andre Marriner at Wembley. She tutors and mentors new officials, and once interpreted a referees’ course into British Sign Language.