Sunny Singh Gill will make history this weekend, becoming the first British South Asian to referee a English Premier League game. The Premier League announced that Gill will officiate the match between Crystal Palace and Luton Town and marking a significant progress not only for him but also the British South Asian community in-large in top-tier football referees in UK. (More Football News)
Sunny will be the seventh referee outside of PGMOL's (Professional Game Match Officials Limited) Select Group to take charge of a Premier League match this season, following the likes of Sam Allison, Sam Barrott, Bobby Madley, Josh Smith, Rebecca Welch and Lewis Smith.
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Talking about his family roots, his father Jarnail remains the first and only English league football referee to wear a turban, officiating 150 matches between 2004 and 2010.
Meanwhile, his brother Bhupinder also became the first Sikh-Punjabi to serve as a Premier League assistant referee when he ran the line in the match between Southampton and Nottingham Forest in January 2023.
Sunny told the EFL, “Football has always run in the family. Me and my brother grew up loving the game and like most young kids, we just wanted to play.
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"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!”
Before making his mark in the PL, the 39-year-old was in-charge of a EFL match (Lower Division) in August 2022 between Northampton and Hartlepool.
