ACME Whistles takes a look back over her pioneering career
The world’s first professional female rugby union referee, Sara Cox MBE, has just announced she is stepping away from international officiating.
Having spoken to Sara several times over the years about refereeing, our partners at ACME Whistles managed to grab some time with her to take a look back over her career and find out how she came to this understandably tough decision.
“I decided after the last Women’s Rugby World Cup that I wanted to end my international career on a high,” she said.
“That’s probably one of the best World Cups that has ever come into the women’s game. You look at where you are in life, how things are starting to pan out and think
OK, maybe it’s time and what a great opportunity to do it when you’ve just come off the back of something so incredible.”
When asked if it was a tough decision to make, Sara replies: “Yeah, it’s always a big decision because you’re going from what you’ve known for years to not having that anymore.
“It’s something that you sit there and have a good long think about and you work out what that looks like for you; what it looks like for your future; what it looks like for your family and then you work back from there and see what you can come up with. I came up with retirement as the best thing for me at this point in my life.”
While this decision will come as a disappointment to many fans and players, Sara is quick to reassure everyone that she is retiring only from the international refereeing circuit, and will still be a regular in the men’s Premiership and European games, when selected.
“It will cut down on travel quite significantly,” she adds.
“While not my main motivation, it was definitely a consideration and now I will get a lot more time at home, pottering round the garden and tending to my vegetables 😉.
“But in all seriousness, I will now have an actual off-season which I’ve not had for many years now.”
Looking back on the main highlights from her international career, Sara looks back to the 10th Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2025 as a standout moment.
“It was by far the best World Cup women’s rugby has ever seen,” she states.
“From the way it was set up and planned and the price points for the tickets all the way through to the fan engagement – I thought it was second to none.
“Especially where we’ve come from in women’s rugby to what it is now, I think it’s night and day so that really sticks out as a real highlight. The tournament also happened to be my 50th cap. It still makes me smile now thinking about that.
“Add to that it being a home World Cup enabling me to referee in my hometown making it all go down as one of the best experiences of my career.”
Sara admits that her 50th test match, while a huge personal achievement, did go hand in hand with her considering the idea of retiring.
“There’s not many of us that have hit the 50 mark,” she says.
“And don’t get me wrong – it won’t be long before I’m surpassed by somebody else, but it was a big thing for me, especially because when I started there was maybe one women’s international yearly, whereas now there’s lots of things going on and it’s nice to have seen that evolution for the women’s game.”
As well as leading the way for female referees by achieving so many firsts within her career, Cox was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to rugby union. So, what’s next for the pioneering ref?
“I’m just looking forward to still being involved in the domestic stuff,” she said.
“I’d say the Prem is up there with being one of the best leagues in the world and for me to be involved in that is a huge privilege and it’s taken a lot of hard work to get there so it’s nice that I can still be involved in that and I’ve still got people supporting my involvement.
“I can have a cut-off point of my seasons now so it’s quite clear when it starts and it’s quite clear when it ends rather than waiting and hoping that you get selected for the international.
“So that’s a silver lining, but like everything there’s positives and negatives to both. I will hugely miss the people on the international scene and I will hugely miss the international scene itself, but all good things come to an end at some point.
“Now is the time where I will take stock and look at where I’ve come from, where I want to go and have some sort of plan in place.
“I don’t know what that looks like for now and the good thing is that this is not a complete step away from rugby – it’s just one element and one arm of that.”
Talking about other amazing referees to keep an eye on, Sara has a lot of praise for her colleagues, saying: “There’s some amazing youngsters coming through from the last World Cup, the likes of Jess Ling, Holly Wood, and I think that in itself is quite exciting.
“I think you’ll have a nice contrast of young coming through with nice prospects versus people that have been around for a little while that can part with that knowledge and make sure that the standards keep moving.”
As one of the world’s leading female referees during a huge period of change for the women’s game, Sara is humble, saying: “It’s quite an honour to be a part of and it sounds a little bit cliche, but to see that evolution of the women’s game has been incredible.
“I remember being in a position where I used to have to pay for my own travel and I saw people pay for their own kit and things like that, so to see things go from that to then moving into an era where those things are just provided as part of an elite sport now is a huge transition into professionalism.
“That in itself has been really exciting and nice to say that you were part of something that ultimately won’t happen again. Things will start to plateau or it will begin to rise again, but I don’t think we will get such a big night and day change within the sport.
“It means we bring with us loads of experience and there are loads of things that I can take with me into business, explaining that transition and how I saw a game evolve.”
As a champion of the sport, Sara says she wants to help to open doors for others, making rugby more accessible to anyone who wants to get involved and helping rugby to continue moving with the times.
“As big as what’s happened in the women’s game, I think rugby itself is going through its own evolution and it’s trying to work out its own identity,” she said.
“Players are helping with that. The likes of your Henry Pollock are bringing character to a sport that we’re probably not used to.
“We’ve seen cricket go from your three-day internationals now to your one hundreds and that has brought with it a new viewership. I think that’s what the men’s game and the women’s game does – the women’s game brings a different viewership than what you would get with the men’s game.
“And it’s lovely to see so many families coming to games because it’s so accessible. I have people even now tapping me on the shoulder in Exeter saying, ‘oh, I went to those two games and it only cost me £10’. What more do you want from the sport?
“You’ve made that extremely accessible for people that maybe aren’t fortunate enough to have that much disposable income, and I think that’s what we need to keep aiming for regardless of what happens with financials.
“I think it’s just about turning around and saying, well, how do we keep the door open for people so that they can access something that we all love and that’s what I want to be a part of is a sport that wants to keep opening doors and I say this to people all the time, regardless of what role you have within rugby, it’s nice just to be involved.
“So go and get involved because all the things that happen on the pitch cannot happen without the people behind the whistle, and the thousands of people behind the scenes making it all happen.
“I go out and do my thing with refereeing but without the support that we get in the background; without the people that open the stadium; without the people that look after the pitch we don’t have this complete ecosystem, so we just need to get more people into the ecosystem and keep it moving whatever that looks like.
“I will always be a supporter of the international scene and I will always watch with a keen eye to what happens next.”
For Cox, it is incredibly important to encourage people to take up the whistle due to a decline in refs at society level.
“The evolution of the sport we just talked about also includes attracting more people into different roles and that includes referees and changing the narrative around their role to be more positive,” she explains.
“Law changes like introducing microphones in stadiums has opened up what we’re saying and why we’ve made certain decisions which enables spectators to stay engaged. So how do we keep people engaged? Well, firstly we can help them understand what’s going on.”
Cox goes on to explain what that might look like, adding: “We as referees would like to take you on a journey with us when it comes to describing our decisions, but we also want to make good decisions and do right by the game.
“No referee goes out there to destroy someone’s afternoon; nobody goes out there to make mistakes, just naturally as human beings, that will happen.
“We try and mitigate that as much as possible by putting in processes. You get that head contact process that’s to try and align and make things as consistent as possible and make it as followable as possible for people that are watching, people that are in it and people that are on the receiving end of it.
“Those things ultimately allow us to take people on a journey with us, and I think that in itself is a massive step towards that engagement from fans and where rugby needs to be.
“Sometimes I think it can be quite difficult for fans to understand what is happening, but we’re not the only sport like that. Look at American football and the playbooks that they work from, the rules that they work with.
“If you can have one of the most successful sports in the world, have the most complicated set of rules and have the engagement it does, then I don’t see why rugby can’t do that as well.”
For more information on refereeing and to get started, visit www.acmewhistles.co.uk
