With the eyes of more than 42,000 inside the stadium on her – and millions more watching on television – and a tempestuous atmosphere building, Davidson calmly identified the challenge as a red-card offence.
Thompson was sent off and England went on to lose a second successive World Cup final to New Zealand. “My assistant referee, Aurelie Groizeleau, was trying to tell me something but the crowd was so noisy that I couldn’t hear what she was saying,” Davidson recalls. “As a referee, you never want to be sending someone off, never mind in a final. But when it went up on screen, I felt it was quite clear cut as a red card.”
With emotions heightened for both teams, she instinctively knew not to approach Thompson after the match. “I would never want to impose myself on anyone because you don’t know what their thoughts are after those situations,” she says. “Maybe in the future I can catch up with Lydia, but I don’t think straight after the game was the best environment.”
With her growing profile come other consequences, such as online abuse, which is becoming all too common for rugby officials and was highlighted last year when Wayne Barnes received violent threats against his family after taking charge of France versus South Africa. While Davidson has not had vitriol on that scale, she is conscientious about setting boundaries on social media.
“I think some people assume the women’s game is a nicer environment but I would say the fans are exactly the same,” says Davidson, who does not have a Twitter account. “I’ve come off a lot of social media or I’ll make it private after big games. Yeah, you receive abusive comments a lot of the time. There will always be criticism of performance, that’s natural. But when it becomes abusive, and also personally abusive to your friends and family, that’s when there has to be a bit of a light to say, ‘Enough’s enough’.”
On a more positive note, Davidson hopes the example of Barnes officiating in his first Premier 15s match last December can help create a more mixed-gender approach when it comes to appointing referees across the men’s and women’s games. “A male referee’s aspirations might be to go to a women’s World Cup and I don’t think we should be stopping guys from entering that space, as long as females are also getting an opportunity,” she says. “In terms of group situations and group dynamics, I think it’s good to have mixed genders, but not to the detriment of growing our female space as well.”
