Referee Faith Mloyi revels in PSL award

Sport
AFTER 17 years in the trade, Plumtree born and bred Faith Mloyi is on cloud nine after she became the first female football match official since Claris Simango in 2015 to be named first runner-up for the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League Referee of the Year at the Soccer Star awards in Harare last week.
Faith Mloyi (left)

BY MUNYARADZI MADZOKERE

AFTER 17 years in the trade, Plumtree born and bred Faith Mloyi is on cloud nine after she became the first female football match official since Claris Simango in 2015 to be named first runner-up for the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League Referee of the Year at the Soccer Star awards in Harare last week.

It has been a long road for the Bulawayo-based police officer, who never had a football background but was convinced by her brother-in-law to attend a referees course back in 2002.

Mloyi is one of the top PSL referees in the country, in a profession which is male-dominated and has flown the country’s flag at the Cosafa Women championships as well as Olympics qualifiers.

The 37-year-old referee could not hide her joy in an interview with The Sports Hub. “I am very happy with this award. It’s something that I was not expecting, so it actually took me by surprise,” she said.

Mloyi is one of the several women on the PSL referees panel for the local league. After the latest milestone, Mloyi is dreaming of officiating at the Women Afcon finals and the World Cup.

“I think I have achieved everything there is to achieve in the past 17 years. The dream for me when I started was to become an international referee and I have achieved that already.

“This award comes as a bonus for me. Maybe the next step for me is to officiate at the World Cup or at Afcon before I retire. I have until the age of 45 to achieve this so I am going to keep working,” she said.

Having grown up in the rural areas in Plumtree, Mloyi took time to reflect on how this journey began.

“It was my sister’s husband, who convinced me to join him for a referee’s course that he was attending and since then I have not looked back. I was also inspired by Sabelo Maphosa, who was holding her own as a female referee back then and here I am,” said Mloyi.

Luckily for Mloyi she has a husband, Mzingayi, who is supportive of her vocation as a football referee as well as an employer, Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), that supports sport.

But as a female referee Mloyi has had to deal with negative stereotypes especially from men, who think that women cannot handle the men’s game.

“Refereeing is not difficult at all especially as you gain more experience, but the biggest challenge is that most men, that is players, coaches and fans think that women do not make good officials. “And when you make an unpopular decision or a mistake they become sexist,” Mloyi said.

And in almost two decades of football officiating, Mloyi remembers two matches that she feels were the toughest she has handled in her career.

The first one dates as far back as 2003 when she was refereeing a Division 2 match.

“I had just gotten a job at OK Zimbabwe so I got a match to referee one weekend. When I got there I realised that the other team was made up of OK staff including my new manager.

“I was so nervous the whole match and an incident occurred during the match involving my manager where I needed to call him out and caution him, but I couldn’t. And it’s an incident we always laugh about until today,” she laughed.

“Then there is a One Wallet match pitting Chicken Inn against CAPS United some years back, which was marred by violence and crowd trouble because of the officiating,” she said.

In October Mloyi was invited among 16 other assistant referees selected by the Confederation of African Football to take part in an Elite ‘A’ Women referees training.