A New Zealand referee is about to enter a boot camp in Portugal as one of 10 international whistlers for the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

When Natarsha “Tarsh” Ganley locked her rugby referee’s whistle away for a few years, little did she know that she would return and go on to reach the highest stage the role has to offer.

Now 33, Ganley was named last month as one of 10 referees who will take charge of matches at the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England this August and September.

After a full-on start to her refereeing career, Ganley took three years off to solidify her off-field career, before Chris Pollock, New Zealand Rugby’s high-performance referee manager, reached out to her.

Pollock needed help during the 2022 Farah Palmer Cup (FPC) and called Ganley, who had made her debut refereeing in the competition as a 21-year-old in 2013. Pollock’s contact reignited something in Ganley as she went on to officiate a number of fixtures that season, including the final between Canterbury and Auckland.

“Just being back in the environment, it definitely reignited the passion. I was more mature, I could actually go out there and be myself on the field,” Ganley says.

“We speak a lot about refereeing from a place of fear versus a place of enjoyment. The fear is more around: am I going to get dropped, am I going have a bad game, what will people think of me? My mindset in that time off had shifted to ‘if I get dropped then I’ll just go back to living this awesome life that I’ve got and friends and family and everything there’, so the worst-case scenario was, oh well, that was fun, I’ll go back to it – and it meant I could actually enjoy the games and have fun.”

After her successful comeback in 2022, the following year brought a number of firsts, starting in July, when she was appointed to referee a Ranfurly Shield game, as the Wellington Lions defended the Log O’ Wood against Horowhenua-Kāpiti in Levin.

“That was amazing, to be the second-ever female to do that. Mum and Dad came down from Whangārei, so it was eight or nine hours in the car for them,” Ganley says.

She completed a full FPC season, including the final, which was again between Auckland and Canterbury. She was also selected to referee at the six-team, second-tier WXV 2 competition in Cape Town. This would have been her international debut, but a surprise was in store.

Ganley will be one of two referees representing New Zealand. Photo / Paul Williams

“The night before the FPC final, I got a call asking what I was doing the following weekend and I was asked to fly to Japan to do a test match [Japan against Fiji] and so I ended up making my international debut a few weeks before WXV 2. It was my first time to Japan and we were based out of Tokyo and it was a fantastic experience, again, refereeing from a place of enjoyment,” Ganley says.

She went on to make her Women’s Six Nations debut in April 2024. She performed assistant referee duties for the Italy-Scotland encounter in Parma, before taking charge of Ireland-Scotland in Belfast the following week. Earlier this year, she again referred the Scotland-Ireland match, this time in Edinburgh. She also made her Super Rugby Pacific assistant-referee debut in front of a capacity crowd in Napier in February as the Hurricanes hosted the Fijian Drua.

“I’ve just been very, very lucky on the journey that I’ve had, having the right support in terms of friends and family and a great mentor and coach in Brendon Pickerill to start with and then Chris Pollock over the last few years, I think all the different achievements can be credited to everyone that’s helped me,” Ganley says.

The upcoming Women’s Rugby World Cup will feature 16 teams, an expansion from the previous 12 and a total of 22 match officials (10 referees, six assistant referees and six Television Match Officials or TMOs) representing 12 nations will take charge of the 32 matches.

All of the 16 on-field appointments are female, with one of the six TMOs, Rachel Horton, from Australia.

Ganley will be one of two referees representing New Zealand, alongside Maggie Cogger-Orr, who is not only one of the most experienced female referees in the world, but also the Women’s referee development manager at New Zealand Rugby.

Formal preparations for Ganley and her colleagues start in mid-June, with a week-long camp in Portugal. There will be team bonding, fitness work and discussions to bring alignment around law and game situations.

After Portugal, the officials will take care of tournament warm-up games for approximately six weeks, with Ganley in charge of Australia-Wales and Fiji-Samoa. She’ll also be an assistant referee for other games, a role she will also fill in England.

Away from the field, Ganley will be getting her strength and conditioning right. She’s working with her trainer, whom she sees twice a week, and is also working with a dietitian and a sports psychologist, making sure she’s in the best possible physical and mental shape for the challenges ahead.

Looking at that amount of work, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Ganley is a fulltime referee, but she isn’t. She stepped down from her role as a compliance analyst for Hobson Wealth Partners when the firm was bought out, and the flexibility she needed for refereeing was reduced. She’s been working for software company Intrahealth for the past nine months in a work-from-home role, which has accommodated her rugby commitments this year.

But even an adaptable employer like that has their limitations and Ganley has recently resigned so that she can concentrate on the sport’s showpiece event.

If she’s not refereeing on the international scene, she lets the North Harbour Rugby Referees Association know she’s available to help out back at grassroots level. One of the association’s initiatives for 2025 is a women and girls refereeing course at clubs, being led by Rebecca Stanaway. The courses are targeted specifically for females, trying to make it a better experience for young women coming though, via a group dynamic.

“Anything that increases awareness in a fun environment is going to be good for everyone,” Ganley says.

She’s from a rugby family, saying rugby is their “love language”. Ganley and her two younger brothers played the game growing up. Their dad would coach while their mum would manage and have the oranges on the sidelines.

But there was no female team for her to play in past intermediate, so she fell back into netball.

When she was 17, there was a New Zealand Rugby “You make the call” refereeing course. She was playing touch for her Dad’s team and one of the guys in the touch team suggested she went along and gave it a go.

All these years on, can Ganley see a time in the future she becomes a fulltime referee?

“I’m not too sure in terms of New Zealand [going fulltime]. Overseas, you’ve got Aimee Barrett-Theron out of South Africa, you’ve got Hollie Davidson out of Scotland and you’ve Sara Cox out of England. I think their systems are different to us down in New Zealand. They’ve got rugby 50 out of 52 weeks of the year, whereas I think down in New Zealand, for the female game especially, we don’t have enough rugby to justify a fulltime position. I hope it is on the horizon, but we’d need more rugby or women doing the top [men’s] level, which Maggie [Cogger-Orr] is pushing the boundary for,” Ganley says.

Regardless of whether she’s fulltime or not, Ganley’s performances, as well as those of all referees, are reviewed in huge detail. Match statistics as well as decisions are examined with feedback and an overall rating provided. Alongside that, there’s the ongoing scrutiny from the rugby public.

“There’s so much detail that goes into a review, and so I’d love the public to see what it actually takes [to get to the top level]. I’d love them to see the sacrifices and the dedication we put into it because my social life is non-existent. I don’t know how people with families do it. It takes some wonderful support behind the curtains I guess around what actually allows people to do this and to do it well and be successful. It is a fulltime job,” Ganley says.

This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.