There’s little doubt that 25-year-old Melbourne-based football referee Joanna Charaktis is in it for the long haul.

Her recently acquired FIFA badge, which she now wears on her uniform, not only speaks of the considerable experience she’s already accumulated as a referee, but also of the exciting possibilities that lie ahead.

Charaktis received her FIFA badge after recently being appointed to the FIFA International Referees List, a select group of referees, who are qualified to officiate at international level.It marks yet another significant milestone in the refereeing career of Charaktis, who commented to Neos Kosmos following her appointment.

“It’s very exciting. It opens up a door to a lot of different opportunities and a lot more hard work. It’s something that I’ve probably been working towards for a while, so it’s good to finally get it.”

To get to this point in her footballing journey, Charaktis has literally and metaphorically already covered considerable ground. She’s run the line in over 240 senior games, spanning eight seasons of the W-League, and senior mens’ competitions including the semi-professional VPL and NPL, and culminating in a career highlight last season when she officiated at an FFA Cup quarter final.Apart from the games themselves, there’s the midweek training and preparations to ensure she meets the fitness performance demanded of her at those levels of competition.

She says, “It’s a lot of time you spend training and being in the best possible shape for those games. You’ve got to do fitness tests regularly, as well as attend training seminars.
“Her commitment to refereeing weekend games, together with her full time work, also means there’s sacrifices that come with refereeing the game at this level, because of the commitment.
“There’s a lot of personal events you end up missing because you’ve got to referee on the weekend.
“She expects the demands will increase even further now she’s joined the FIFA International list.
“The demands will grow even more once you become a FIFA ref and you’ve got to go overseas and you’ve got to get time off work and all that.”

Charaktis’ pathway began almost ten years ago when as a fifteen year old she switched from playing junior football (at Glen Waverley Soccer Club and Whitehorse United), to refereeing. She says her father Jim Charaktis, who is also a referee, encouraged her to take it up, saying there weren’t many female referees at the time.

Charaktis says, “I started refereeing whilst playing football. It then became a bit much doing both. And then I said, ‘Fine, I’ll just referee. I’m a better referee than player’. And so that’s where the pathway began. It feels like ages ago.”

One of the challenges of being a match official is having to deal with criticism (often unsolicited), dissent and sometimes in the worst cases, abuse, from fans, players and coaches. Parochial fans, players and coaches often criticise or question a referee’s judgement. Whilst players and coaches can be disciplined by match officials, if they step over the line, fans yelling from the sidelines or jumping onto social media to vent their anger at officials after the game, are much more difficult to control. Charaktis says that being able to deal with these challenges develops with experience. She also says it helps when you’ve got other referees as a supportive team around you.

“It’s all about having that team environment where you know the referee is going to take the right action upon your advice.”

She says, “Unfortunately the retention rate of them (female refs) is quite low. It’s gotten better. From FFV and FFA , there’s definitely been a lot of structure and women’s football in general that’s built up. And together with that there’s been programs, initiative to keep female refs as well…
“I think it comes down to young female referees that come on board, and they might cop abuse at some stage for one reason or other, and they just don’t have the experience to know how to deal with it, bounce back and continue on.”

Charaktis credits her father Jim with supporting her early in her development.

“I was lucky because my dad was a referee and I had him at every game that I refereed at because I didn’t have a licence and he drove me to all my games. As a ref, he knew what to expect, so he could help me out a lot. So I think I was lucky from that perspective… Unfortunately, not all young referees in general have that support network, so I can understand how they cop some abuse and think it’s not worth coming out every Saturday and getting abused for the decisions you make to the best of your abilities.”

Her advice to young referees starting out is, “Have a mentor. Utilise us for those support services. At Football Victoria, we have branches and at least one female referee at every branch. So utilise us for those sorts of support services. It’s OK that you don’t know how to handle the abuse, or you’ve made a mistake and it was bit of a big deal during the game. We all make mistakes. It happens. It’s just about going through the right channels to resolve it and find ways of dealing with it.”

For Charaktis, the journey continues with her next goal being to officiate in A-League games within the next couple of years. Beyond that she says one of her longer term goals is to officiate at a Women’s World Cup.

She says, “It’s quite the process to lead to that. The first step from where I am now is to try and get onto the AFC (Asian Football Confederation) elite panel, get appointed to AFC tournaments. And I guess, the more of those you do, then you can get nominated to go to FIFA tournaments, and from there you can get nominated for a World Cup… Yeah maybe not the next one. The one after maybe, hopefully 2027.”