Women laying down the law

SNOOKER: GIVEN the sort of places snooker is most often played, the lack of top-class female competitors is no surprise.

Snooker clubs, male-dominated establishments with political allegiances and even pubs with snooker tables are not the most hospitable places for women to take up the game.

But that is not to say snooker is a male-dominated sport these days. The European mainland is a breeding ground for female referees and it was refreshing to see evidence of this at the Betway UK Championship at York’s Barbican Centre.

I was there to watch Oldham’s Michael Wild in action, but on the next table – which featured a match between Belgium’s Luca Brecel and Iran’s Hossein Vafaei – was an efficient female official called Malgorzata Kanieska from Poland.

She first started refereeing European Tour events in 2010 and has since gained considerable experience, including qualifying rounds of the World Championship.

The fact that Kanieska was considered competent enough to referee matches at the sport’s second biggest championship is a considerable statement of confidence by World Snooker.

Scotland’s Michaela Tabb, who has left the sport, was the pioneer for female referees, but now their are lots of them.

Tabb left the regular circuit in September when she agreed a settlement with the governing body after bringing a case against the professional tour ironically claiming sex discrimination, unfair dismissal and breach of contract.

Whatever the fall-out from that case was, there certainly seems to be no evidence that women will be denied matches at the highest level.

Desilslava Bozhilova hails from Bulgaria and, away from the table, is a landscape architecture student, Tatiana Woollaston is from Belarus and works for clothing firm Next, while Eva Poskocilova comes from the Czech Republic and is a translator and teacher at the renowed Charles University in Prague.

Then there is Germany’s Maike Kesseler, who mixes working in a bank with her refereeing duties, and Monika Sukowska, a sports journalist from Poland.