Football - well, it’s a boy thing, isn’t it? Any self-respecting male teenager knows that girls who show an interest are being patronising or, worse, dabbling with something they know nothing about. The ultimate proof is the seeming inability of most females to understand the offside rule.

But over the past decade, women have made significant incursions into the beautiful game: Karren Brady is managing director at Birmingham City, Wendy Toms has graduated to be an assistant referee in the Nationwide league, and Rachel Anderson has broken through as a player’s agent. And, above all this, is the example of the United States, from whence come all things cool as far as teenagers are concerned. There, “soccer” is as much a woman’s game as it is a man’s, and female stars have achieved professional and even cult status with their progress in the women’s World Cup.

When my daughter Abby was 14, she was slight, shy and reserved. But her pocket money was no longer funding her taste in clothes and CDs, so she set out to supplement her income with a weekend job. Her poor record on early rising cut out delivering newspapers, and in other areas she was two years short of the requisite legal age.

“Why don’t you take up football refereeing?” I suggested. After all, she had seen me vanish through the door every Sunday morning to take charge of local league matches (I’m a qualified referee).

“Dad, I’m only 14,” she protested. I told her that that was no problem as she would initially be given minor league matches involving teams under the age of 16.

Taking up refereeing seemed exactly right for Abby. My wife agreed - and she is about as interested in football as I am in marquetry. Abby wanted to earn some money, was fitness-conscious and had a reasonable knowledge of the game gained from hours of watching television and live games with her dad. Pay at pound;8, plus expenses, per 70-minute game compared favourably as an hourly rate with anything local shops or cafes could offer. And there was another angle. Early career aspirations included law: what better than football officiating as an early apprenticeship in applying law and administering a bit of rough justice?

After two months of pondering the implications, she announced at tea one evening that she was ready to take a 10-week FA course leading to a refereeing qualification. So each Tuesday evening I drove her into Scarborough for two-hour sessions with her fellow hopefuls - nine men aged 20 to 42. School commitments forced her to miss a couple of weeks, but the instructor gave her homework to compensate.

She started watching televised football with a new outlook, saving special scorn for the commentators, who always seemed so quick to carp at referees from their cosy vantage point of hindsight and access to slo-mo.

One thing GCSE teaches you is the necessity of swotting and rote learning, and by the final exam evening, Abby had prepared and rehearsed all 19 FA laws. The result was a boost to her confidence - she took the group top mark of 87 per cent and was instantly presented with her refereeing credentials.

“You’ve passed your driving test, now you’ve got to drive,” I told her on the way home. I saw the dread in her eyes. “You need a match within two weeks or you’ll never do it,” I continued, having seen many fallers at this first fence. The FA anticipates that slightly under half of newly qualified referees never get the courage to take up the whistle.

Abby phoned our local league secretary, who was overjoyed at having a new ref in the ranks - qualified refs are in short supply - and not the least bit bothered that it was a female. “That first match - I had a rock in the bottom of my stomach and the feeling that I would try to run but my legs would refuse to move,” she says now.

At under-16 level, it’s not the players you have to watch out for so much as their parents. Each expects their offspring to sign up for a Premiership outfit - even those with a more realistic view are likely to turn hysterical if their young charge is tackled roughly. It is, of course, the fault of the referee for offering inadequate protection.

There were a few mutterings on the line that first day two years ago, but the awareness that she was new to the job bred some degree of tolerance. For Abby, the first lesson of her new career concerned toilets, which are male-only: best then to drink as little as possible immediately before the game and make visiting the loo the final act before leaving home.

Following a successful first season, she was chosen to act as assistant ref for a senior referee and, in the game’s early stages, flagged down a pacy attacker just as he neared goal.

“You what? You what? She’s a girl. She doesn’t understand offside,” the player protested to the referee. Out came the yellow card.

Inevitably, some of the players she has refereed have been pupils at her own school - although she only refereed the odd house match at her high school before moving on to sixth-form college. As they passed her in the corridor they would chant in unison: “Offside! Offside!” A malevolent stare from the off-duty ref was usually enough to quell it.

The shadow of the premiership is everywhere and, sadly, this season she has had to dispense even more cautions, although not yet a dismissal. We have talked it over and she feels it would be less traumatic for a boy if she spoke to his manager, insisting on a substitution rather than a red card.

“Tackle like that again, and you’ll be getting a yellow card,” she recently told one 12-year-old prima donna.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Come here - I’m booking you for dissent.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and his face collapsed like a sponge, producing a stream of tears. “Booked by a girl!”, his mates taunted him back at school and, to top it all, his mum stopped a week’s pocket money.

Abby Combes, now 17, is studying AS-levels at Scarborough sixth-form college.To find out more about refereeing courses: www.footballreferee.com