Name: Taylah Scholefield
Role: Football Match Official
Qualifications: Level 1 Match Official (practical certification in progress)
Awards: Football Queensland’s Female Referee of the Year (2022) FIFA.
I have been a match official for Football Queensland for 16 years. So this will be my 16th season with the whistle in hand.
So football has a pretty big place in my heart. My grandad was one of three referees in Dalby where I grew up. He passed away when I was in Grade 8, and I found his refereeing stuff when we were cleaning up his house. I found his bag, I’ve got his whistle, I’ve got his coin, I’ve got his flags —and we’ve got his uniform at home.
At the time I was a gymnast. I didn’t want a bar of football, although Pop tried to get me into it a few times. A couple of years after he died I had a falling out with my gymnastics coach and thought…maybe now’s the time?
So I started playing and refereeing the same year. I was the only female on the course. And then the next weekend I was out on the pitch. I think my first game was an under 13s game and then the week after that I did an under 15s game and I had my first red card. Thrown in the deep end pretty well straight away. It was a bit of a sink or swim situation, but I really enjoyed it.
I wouldn’t change my football journey for the world. And I actually carry my grandad’s coin with me for every match. His whistle’s a bit old now so I’ve got an upgrade, but I still bring it along with me in my bag.
Currently, I’m a level one match official with the theory component. So yet to do my practical component. Football Australia has recently changed the structure of how to become a referee.
So to get into football officiating across Australia, you need to complete the Junior Football Match Official course. That’s done through Football Australia, so that’s to get into junior football. If you’re under 18, that’s the course you’ll need to do. If you’re over 18, there is the Senior Football Match Official course. So people with experience in playing over 18 and the older age group of people wanting to get into match officiating can do the senior course instead of the junior.
So the courses are all online now. It’s all self -paced learning, so if it takes you six months to do the course, it can take you six months to do the course. Once you’ve completed the online component —which has videos and is very interactive— you then register with Football Australia and find a location where the practical course is being run. That’s a three-hour practical session with someone like myself, or anyone that is an instructor that can present the course to you. So we teach you the practical components of refereeing.
In relation to refereeing a match, we find out about 10 days prior. My preparation generally starts then. I look at the teams that I’ve got, where I’ve got to be. I schedule a lot of things around that.
I’ll always pack my bag the day before, that’s just my thing, but I don’t like forgetting things. So from there I generally work backwards from kickoff time, so if kickoff is at 7.15 I generally get there around an hour and a half beforehand and basically plan my day back from there.After the match we then review the footage. We look at any key match incidents, things that I could have done better, things that I did well, how we worked well as a team — all those sorts of things. So that can take up to another two hours on top of the game. And then depending on how hectic the game is, we can generally have between a 30-45 minute chat about how to improve for the next time.
Training is pretty intense the higher you go. So a lot of my friends are in the National League, and the training that they do is a lot more intense than what I would do. But we are still required to pass fitness tests for state-level football.
I personally train between four and five times a week plus a game. Every training session is between 45 minutes and an hour. Two of those are running minimum. Sometimes I’ll ride, sometimes I’ll swim, it just depends. A lot of strength training, but we have group training sessions on a Tuesday and a Thursday that we attend, where there’s between 20 to 40 people that attend as match officials and it’s basically run your heart out.
At least 10 hours a week. Being a match official is a part-time role for me at this point in time as I also run my own business as a chiropractor.
What I love most about being a match official is the community and the team around me. I have a lot of friends that I’ve made through refereeing across Australia. My three best friends are match officials and ex -match officials. Without being involved in this sport I would never have met them and I would never have gotten to do the travel that I’ve gotten to do. My best friend and I went to China in 2019 and got to referee over there, which was a pretty cool experience. But I think the community is the biggest thing.
I think that in a challenging game, actually in any game, the reality is that you’re going to make a decision that someone doesn’t like. It’s two teams on the field, so one team’s going to be happy with you, and one team’s not going to be happy with you. Let alone the mistakes that you might make, and you might see something completely different.
I think the biggest part is that you just have to accept that maybe you are wrong and you can just have you just have to park that decision. It just has to be ‘Yep. I’ve made it. I’ve done it.’ And we have to move forward because there’s another potentially 90 minutes of the match that you’ve now got to get through.
I get excited for every game. I get nervous for every game. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the grand final or it’s just a league game or it’s the under -15s game that you go out and do on a weekend because you need to fill in the game. For me it is just a game and I’m there to facilitate it. And I’ll facilitate it to the best of my ability and provide what the players need in that moment.
I think being a female in a male-dominated sport is hard across the board, whether it’s football or anything else. There are hard times being a match official in this sport. I think that I’ve had my fair share of moments that have made me want to walk away from the game, but there’s also been those moments where having that community around me has supported me completely in getting me back out on the field as soon as I can.
I do a lot of mentoring, I do a lot of coaching with our junior match officials — both male and female. But obviously being a female has a bit of a closer connection, so I’m really supporting them wholeheartedly to make sure we’re keeping them in the game. We’re trying things to attract and retain female match officials across Australia, and we haven’t quite nailed it yet, but we’re getting there. And I think that the space has a lot to grow.
We need to encourage more people into refereeing, and that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about mentoring.
Give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose. The community around you will support you in every way that’s possible. You’re either going to like it or you’re not, but if you don’t give it a go, you’ll never know whether it was right for you or not.
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