Who is Sian Massey-Ellis, is she refereeing at the Women’s World Cup and what happened in the sexism row?
WITH the Women's World Cup starting this Friday on June 7, English referee Sian Massey-Ellis will be looking forward to being part of the Swiss team of officials at the tournament.
Who is Sian Massey-Ellis?
Massey-Ellis is a 33-year-old English match official was born on October 5, 1985 in Coventry.
She mostly officiates in the role of assistant referee in the Premier League and Football League.
The referee has also been involved in the FA Cup, the Women's World Cup qualification matches, and in the Women's Champions League.
Outside of her officiating career, Massey-Ellis is a school teacher.
Is she refereeing at the Women's World Cup?
Massey-Ellis will be serving as an assistant referee at this summer's World Cup.
She will be among the England representatives, along with Lisa Rashid.
Scotland have Kylie Cockburn in France, while Ireland's Michelle O'Neill will also be among the assistant referees.
What happened in the sexism row?
Despite already having a successful career in football, Massey-Ellis is still best known for the sexism scandal that occurred back in 2011.
The incident saw Richard Keys and Andy Grey, both presenters on Sky Sports at the time, make sexist comments about Massey-Ellis after a Premier League match between Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
They joked that she probably did not know the offside rule, after she flagged up Fernando Torres for being offside.
Keys remarked: "The game's gone mad."
Meanwhile, Gray said after the game: "Why is there a female linesman? Somebody's f***** up big."
Their comments were not aired live, but were recorded and passed onto the Mail on Sunday.
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Sky Sports then made a statement in which they labelled the presenters' comments as 'not acceptable', before sacking them.
Speaking out on the topic for the first time in 2017, Massey Ellis told The Times that Keys had called to apologise, reportedly telling the presenter he 'should have known better', considering her tough career journey.
But, the former Sky Sports man responded on Twitter, claiming the referee had left out important information surrounding the phone call.
Among his posts on the social media site, he told how she had called the incident 'only banter' and Massey-Ellis had thanked him for not showing her supposed error.
Keys had warned the official about not telling the full story, only for the presenter to come under further scrutiny from the public.