PGMOL chief Howard Webb has denied his former staff member lost her position as an international football referee because she complained a coach “manhandled” her.
Lisa Benn, 34, alleges she was grabbed and threatened by an assistant referee coach and unfairly lost her position on FIFA’s international officials list after she opted to lodge a grievance.
Months after the incident, Benn went from fifth to sixth in the PGMOL nominations to the football governing body.
Webb, himself previously a high-profile Premier League referee, told an employment tribunal on Thursday that the Women’s Super League (WSL) official received a lower ranking due to being outperformed by others.
FIFA only accepts five referees on their women’s game list and the panel heard PGMOL unsuccessfully pitched for it to take on a sixth that season.
Webb told the tribunal it was “our honestly held belief that she would be accepted” because of the growth of the women’s game and the “noises we were hearing” from sports bodies.
“Unfortunately, highly regrettably, it wasn’t, but unfortunately, compared to the other officials in this ranking, she was correctly placed sixth based on the performance factors listed and the holistic view we’ve gone through,” he said.
“This is a competitive world in which we work and we need to rank officials against each other.
“We produce a lot of other really good officials in this country and we are in the difficult task to have to rank them against each other.”
The “holistic” approach to rankings, Webb said, included officials’ physical attributes, ability to make contextual decisions, their in-game engagement, interpersonal skills on and off the pitch and knowledge of the game.
The claimant said she no longer worked at PGMOL, which is the only body to employee referees in England and now officiated matches on a self-employed basis.
Benn alleges that Steve Child, a former Premier League assistant referee, grabbed her arm and “forcefully pushed” her on to a pitch at a Video Assistant Referee training tournament on March 29 2023.
A brawl broke out at the end of the game and Child is accused of later telling her: “Your card has been marked.”
Child, then a PGMOL assistant referee coach for the women’s game, has denied making the comment and said any physical contact was a “guiding arm if anything”.
A PGMOL investigation that year found there was insufficient evidence of the claims and Child’s behaviour did not meet the threshold for disciplinary action.
Following the investigation, Child and Benn attended a training camp on August 19, 2023 and the claimant alleges the coach intimidated her in the hotel reception.
Benn raised this with Webb’s wife, Bibi Steinhaus-Webb, then PGMOL’s head of women’s referees.
PGMOL’s FIFA nominations were submitted the following month and Benn learned she had not been selected from the cohort that December, the tribunal heard.
Carla Fischer, for the claimant, put to Webb: “She made a second complaint that a male PGMOL coach made unwanted threatening remarks to a female referee in the women’s game and that is why she was ranked sixth isn’t it.”
Webb said: “No, that is not correct.”
A meeting was held in October 2023 in which Benn discussed her issues with PGMOL’s investigation and flagged that officials feared raising grievances because of possible consequences.
The discussion included the claimant, Webb, and PGMOL’s chief operating officer Danielle Every.
Asked what he remembered of the discussion, Webb said: “I believe I can recall the point being raised by Lisa that there was this sense of fear, among officials, in terms of reporting concerns.”
He said he was concerned that officials felt that way and that the subject had been discussed since at annual meetings.
“This all happened shortly after Dani and I came in to post; of course, we want to know what is on the minds of our officials and for them to speak to us openly and confidently,” he said.
“We want our officials out on the field and performing.”
Describing the status of the FIFA list, Webb said: “Referees, they treasure this badge, they really, really do.
“We had a view that a sixth position was really, really quite likely. I think the growth of the women’s game is pretty incredible and we think it’s important to serve the demand.”
The tribunal continues.
