I’m a Premier League referee – but by night I live a very different life as a prison officer
Rising ref following in the footsteps of his groundbreaking father
HISTORY-MAKER Sunny Gill Singh uses skills he learnt working in jails to keep control on a football pitch.
Prison officer Gill will become the first British South Asian to referee a top-flight match in England when he takes charge of the Premier League clash between Crystal Palace and Luton tomorrow.
Gill worked at Feltham Prison and Young Offender Institution as recently as 2022 and still does the occasional shift in the prison service.
He said: “I find it a little bit easier managing players!
“But there’s always pressure and there are 22 sets of eyes in different positions that will always have an opinion.
“In a prison, you’ve got to know how to talk to people when they get angry and frustrated.
“Players are the same when things don’t go their way.
“You have to sell your decision to them straight away. You have to be a bit cute.”
When Gill started reffing Sunday league football at the age of 17, he found it a lot tougher.
He explained: “The players would turn up half-drunk from the Saturday night out. They always thought they knew more than you.
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“Every decision you made, it was World War III.
“For £25 a match or whatever, I didn’t even enjoy it and it put me off.
“I never faced any racial comments, but I nearly got into a few fights, definitely.
“And as a non-white person in the game, it’s easier for people to remember your face if you make a mistake.”
Fortunately, Gill and his brother Bhupinder, a high-level assistant referee, had the perfect role model in their father, Jarnail Singh.
The latter remains the only man wearing a turban to ref an English league match, having taken charge of 150 EFL matches between 2004 and 2010.
Gill, 39, said: “The first match I went to with my dad was Arsenal vs Everton when he was fourth official.
“I was used to seeing my dad on Match of the Day and speaking about it at school.”
Now Gill will make his debut on the BBC show after a meteoric rise.
When SunSport spoke to the family in 2020, Gill had just been promoted to National League Premier level.
I’m improving in every department… I now want to set more goals and fulfil my dream
Sunny Gill Singh
In April 2021, he and Bhups were the first South Asians to officiate at the same Championship game when he was fourth official and his brother was an assistant for Nottingham Forest’s visit to Bristol City.
Then in November 2023, Gill was the first South Asian since his dad to ref a Championship game as he took charge of Huddersfield vs Watford.
He and his brother benefited from the FA’s three-year equality, diversity and inclusion plan, In Pursuit of Progress, and its specific Asian Inclusion Strategy.
In 2019, the FA launched its Asian Inclusion Strategy, a five-pillar plan that aims to address the underrepresentation of Asian communities by encouraging more players, coaches, referees and staff from an Asian background to make football their chosen career path.
Now the FA and refereeing body the PGMOL are working together via the new Core X programme to create more diversity among top-level match officials, while a separate initiative aims to recruit 1,000 more referees from under-represented backgrounds.
Bhups made his Premier League debut last season and now Sunny will take the biggest step of all for British Asian match officials – just as he hoped to do when speaking last October.
Gill said: “It’s been a lot of hard work training away from the pitch, improving in every department with the help of the PGMOL and my coaches.
“I now want to set more goals and fulfil my dream of becoming the first South Asian to referee in the Premier League.”
