To Hull and back: the life of the first female rugby league referee in the UK takes centre stage

Julia Lee officiating during her refereeing days.

When Julia Lee was growing up in Hull she lived and breathed rugby league and despite barriers put in her way, she went on to become the first female referee in the 13-man game, officiating up to professional and international levels.

After injury curtailed her refereeing career, Julia went on to work for the Rugby Football League (RFL) for more than 20 years, implementing many grassroots and participation schemes and becoming a director as well as delivering a £29million Sport England award.

Now focusing on looking to help out young people, Julia’s story has inspired a play called ‘Ref!’ by Sarah-Jane Dickenson which will tour in the autumn after having its premiere at Hull KR in early July.

Julia was born in 1968 in a city that has always had rugby league as its heartbeat, the rivalry between Hull and Hull KR a constant thread.

After losing her father at three years old, Uncle Arthur took Julia under his wing although he was torn over her love of rugby league, thinking the terraces with its beer culture and swearing were not the right place for a girl.

At school the boys would not allow her to take part but she was not to be stopped and instead became a self-appointed referee aged 10.

Her time came in 1980 when Hull FC and Hull KR met in the Challenge Cup final at Wembley and Julia attended her first game and from that point was hooked after her beloved Red and Whites lifted the trophy.

“The city was buzzing and I think I found somewhere I belonged,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have known at the time but I would track it to my dad’s death. I was a very lonely child and I didn’t have a lot in common with dressing up nicely, I played with Action Men if I had to play with dolls. I didn’t like to follow the crowd particularly and I suddenly belonged on the terraces and also I was coming into my teenage years and you are allowed to swear on the terraces.

“It was a great way of verbalising things and I found a niche group of people that suddenly we had something in common. It’s that belonging: I do a lot of work with kids now around that because I think it’s really key. If you can find where you belong then you have a chance in life, whatever group it may be, it’s really important. I always say that from 12 I could have gone in different directions – I think finding RL at that point – because some friends (were) pregnant at 14, alcohol addiction, drugs, those sort of things at very early ages.

“They didn’t find where they belonged really and although I picked up alcohol on the terraces because it went with it, it was in a controlled environment with safe people rather than out on the streets and things like that.”

At 17, and fuelled by a few pale ales and a bet from a friend, Julia answered an advert for a referee and got a reply addressed to Mr Lee. Shocked a girl would want to be a referee, Julia persuaded them she could cope with any amount of brawling an under-11 clash would throw at her and allayed their fears over where she would change to be given the job. Her first match was not an auspicious start to her refereeing career as she forgot different signals and training was limited to a laws of the game handbook and common sense.

Julia moved to London at 18 to nanny and set up her own team as well as refereeing men’s open age fixtures.

“It was fortunate because I don’t think they would ever have taken me off the kids, I don’t think they would ever have had the courage to move me into open age,” she said. “But when I went to London that is all there was. I went straight from doing under-11s games to refereeing men’s rugby in London equally with no skills and no techniques. I was given a laws of the games exam when I was in London but I just had to go and referee, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing really.

“I would say probably the first three years I made it up because nobody really coached or trained me, nobody watched me, I cried off the pitch once because they started fighting and I didn’t know how to stop them. They reminded me of that years later.”

A trip to Australia to follow the Great Britain tour turned into an opportunity to get more refereeing experience in 1988 in Sydney.

On her return she started moving up the ranks and was awarded bigger games, right up to national conference and A teams. She was awarded women’s – although not men’s – finals as well as the Oxford v Cambridge varsity game with her first professional game at Keighley when Cougar-mania was at its peak in 1993-4.

There were of course some testing times: she abandoned a game in the Yorkshire Premier Men’s Division while the Batley coach refused to let her replace the referee after he had fallen ill ahead of a game against Featherstone Rovers in March 1993. Instead he ran up and down abusing her with no apparent thought of consequence with the club subsequently missing out on funding for the following three years.

The players would address her as ‘sir’ with Julia rarely experiencing ill-discipline although she would not have been interested in refereeing football, believing it to be disrespectful.

There was another trip to officiate in Australia in 1998 where she took charge of a women’s clash with New Zealand before injury and subsequent retirement to work for the RFL.

Now Julia is looking to help young people, using the skills she has learned through her career to go back and make a difference, having set up an organisation called Common Sense Initiative (CSI).

The play ‘Ref’, directed by Rod Dixon of Red Ladder Theatre, is part of a larger Space2 project called ‘Crossing the Line’ which aims to uncover and share the stories of women connected to rugby league. The project will work in partnership with rugby league clubs and foundations taking the theatre performance and interactive community workshops into those communities. All the stories and memories people share will be part of a wider collection of artefacts and archives at Hull KR and the National Rugby League Museum due to open in Bradford in 2021.

A version of this appeared first on www.themixedzone.co.uk.