RUGBY - Referee steps up and awards herself a pass mark

Fans and players at the Kamo Rec grounds could be forgiven for doing a double-take when the referees showed up for the Kamo versus Old Boys match on Saturday.
Normally Natarsha Ganley would draw her fair share of second-glances among a rugby crowd but the 17-year-old Kamo High School student caused a few jaws to drop when she made her first premier grade appearance as an assistant referee.
"When I turned up to go through the pre-match routine a few of the players were staring ... but then they saw my referee's uniform and seemed to forget I'm a girl," she said.
Ganley was adjudicating in her second match of the day after having earlier controlled a junior boys' eighth-grade encounter between Kamo High School and Rodney College.
The high school match was her fourth game in charge this season but her calm nature masked the fact it was the highest level of match she had ever refereed.
"I reffed seven or eight games last year and they were all JB5 or JB6, which is under-13, so this is a step up," she said after the match.
She enjoyed the game and awarded herself a pass mark.
"It was much faster than the other games I'd refereed so far but I enjoyed it more because there was more structure to it."
She said it was a good, clean game but said the language used on the field had surprised her.
"I talked to both captains at halftime and we sorted it out and it was a lot better in the second half. I had to ping (sinbin) one guy because he was threatening another guy but that was the only discipline problem I had," she said.
The match ended in a 25-0 win for Rodney but there were no complaints from defeated captain Matt Burns after the match. "It's the first time I've been reffed by a girl but it went really well. We had fair calls out there," he said.
Her gender didn't change anything, he said.
"It was just like having a normal ref," he said.
Ganley enjoys refereeing and wants to take it to a higher level after she experienced the buzz of a Super-14 match first hand at North Harbour.
"I was basically the watergirl for the refs when the Blues played the Reds and the Cheetahs and it was great to see behind the scenes what it was like," she said.
The budding referee used to play rugby until she was 11 and started playing netball. It was quite by chance she began refereeing.
"I still play touch and one of the guys said to come to a referees' meeting because they needed more female refs ... and here I am" she said.