Howard is a former professional referee. During his career, he primarily officiated in the Premier League as well as across some of the biggest stages in domestic and international football including the FA Cup Final, Champions League Final and, most notably, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final in South Africa. Howard was a police officer with South Yorkshire Police but chose to focus on refereeing where he went on to become one of the country’s most respected referees.

He is now the Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) after spending six years as General Manager at the Professional Referee Organisation, working with Major League Soccer in the US.

Anthony started refereeing in 1995 progressing from grassroots through the Cheshire League, Northern Premier League and Conference when he was appointed to the Football League referees' list in 2006. During this time, he was also working as a Prison Officer, a career he was involved with for 13 years.

In 2010, he was promoted to the list of Select Group Referees who officiate primarily in the Premier League, and in 2013 became a FIFA international referee.

In 2015, he officiated both the League Cup Final (Chelsea v Tottenham) and FA Community Shield (Chelsea v Arsenal) before refereeing the 2017 and 2020 FA Cup finals (Chelsea v Arsenal). He has also been in charge for the 2018 Championship play-off final (Aston Villa v Fulham).

Anthony has refereed over 360 Premier League matches in a total of nearly 600 professional matches.

On the international stage, Anthony has taken charge of over 100 matches in both UEFA and FIFA competitions. In 2020, he was chosen to referee the UEFA Super Cup (Bayern Munich v Sevilla) and officiated 3 matches at EURO 2020.

Having then refereed to UEFA Nations League final in 2021 (Spain v France), Anthony officiated 2 matches at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar before also refereeing both the FIFA Club World Cup final (Al Hilal v Real Madrid) and the UEFA Europa League final (Roma v Sevilla) in 2023.

Rebecca Welch became a football referee in 2010 but continued to work in her NHS post until 2019, before turning her attention to officiating on a full-time basis.

A trailblazer, she became the first woman appointed to an EFL match in 2021 and followed that by becoming the first woman to referee a Premier League match in 2023.

During her impressive career, Rebecca has also refereed the 2017 and 2020 Women’s FA Cup finals while, in December 2020, she was added to UEFA’s elite women’s list and since refereed on the biggest stages including the 2022 UEFA Women’s EUROS, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the 2024 UEFA Women’s Champions League final and, most recently, the Olympics women’s football tournament, rounding off the top three tournaments in as many years.

Referee Sunny Singh Gill took charge of his first Sunday League game when he was aged 17 and now regularly operates across the EFL.

In March 2024 Sunny made history when he became the first British South Asian to referee a match in the Premier League, taking charge of Crystal Palace vs Luton Town.

Sunny has history making in the family as his father, Jarnail, who refereed 150 EFL matches between 2004-2010, remains the first and only EFL referee to wear a turban and Sunny’s brother, Bhupinder, became the first Sikh-Punjabi to serve as a Premier League assistant referee when he ran the line for Nottingham Forest vs Southampton in January 2023.

Prior to Sunny and Bhupinder’s individual successes, together they became the first people of Indian descent to officiate in the same Championship match when they did so in 2021.

Sunny attributes his love of refereeing to his dad, saying that football has always run the family.

Daniel currently works at PGMOL as the Development Director.  Prior to this, he spent 12 years at the Football Association as Head of Refereeing for Technical and Development. Daniel headed up all the training, education, development and support provided to those 'ambitious' Referees in England who are trying to the climb to the elite levels of the game.

He supports and is the technical lead for the Referees within the National League system - preparing them for their transition into the full time professional game.

Daniel has also constructed and subsequently leads on the FA CORE (Centre of Refereeing Excellence) programme which works with over 400 Referees nationwide who are showing exceptional levels of potential whilst having the opportunity to become our talent of tomorrow.

Daniel was formerly a match official.