At her home in Blackpool, Natalie Aspinall has a 25-year-old local newspaper cutting kept from the days when she was taking her first steps on the road to becoming a referee.
Just 15 years old, Aspinall had started a refereeing course based at a local working men's club after her father Billy persuaded her it would pay better than a paper round.
Aspinall tells Sportsmail: 'It was in my scrapbook and the headline was: 'Teenage girl sets sights on the Premier League'.
'I remember the boys at school laughing at me when they saw it.