Sunny Singh Gill set to become first-ever British South Asian referee to officiate Premier League match

Sunny Singh Gill started his refereeing career at the age of 17

This coming weekend, Sunny Singh Gill will officiate a Premier League game for the first time as a British South Asian.

Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) confirmed that Singh Gill had been selected to lead Crystal Palace against Luton on Saturday.At the age of just 17, he officiated his first Sunday League games. In April 2021, he and his brother Bhupinder made history by being the first two British South Asians to referee the same Championship game.

When his father Jarnail Singh officiated Bristol Rovers vs Bury in August 2004, he became the first official in the EFL to do so while sporting a turban. Singh Senior continued to officiate nearly 200 EFL games until 2010.

Sunny Singh Gill stated the following in an interview that was posted on the Premier League website last month:

‘You want the younger generation to look at you and think ‘I can also do it’. ‘If parents are looking at us thinking, ‘Wow, we have Asian kids in the Premier League officiating games, my son can give that a go, my daughter can give that a go…’

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‘Football has always run in the family,’ he added in an interview with the EFL published last season.

‘Me and my brother grew up loving the game and like most young kids, we just wanted to play but in our household it was a bit different because when we were going to primary school, we knew our dad was going out to referee on a weekend.

‘There were times he was a fourth official in the Premier League and our friends would say they saw him on Match of the Day!’

In August 2022, Singh Gill took responsibility for his initial EFL game, a League Two encounter between Hartlepool and Northampton.

After Bhupinder Singh Gill ran the field during Southampton vs. Nottingham Forest in January 2023, he became the first Sikh-Punjabi assistant referee in Premier League history.Sunny Singh Gill was let go after being spotted by QPR and going through trials at the club’s youth facility in west London.

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