Keighley, alongside four other female match officials, will officiate at the OFC U-17 Championship with each hoping to shine brightly enough in American Samoa and Samoa to catch the eye of FIFA.
‘’OFC appointed me to this tournament to help with the development of female match officials and to work with other OFC officials.
“Our collective goal as female match officials is always the FIFA Women’s World Cup,” she says, “Selection for Canada would be amazing, it is definitely a goal of mine since I was first involved in refereeing. You can achieve these amazing objectives by being involved in refereeing.
‘’I put a FIFA Women’s World Cup in my list of goals I want to accomplish. Going to a FIFA Women’s World Cup™ is the pinnacle for me,’’ she says.
The 32-year-old from Taranaki, in New Zealand’s rural heartland, has already tasted international competition at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica and Youth Olympic Games Girls’ Football Tournament in Nanjing last year.
And now she hopes to follow in the footsteps of other OFC match officials to work at a senior FIFA World Cup™ such as Mike Hester, Peter O’Leary, Tahiti’s Norbert Hauata, and Fiji’s female referee trail-blazer Finau Vulivuli.
‘’Mike Hester was my mentor a couple of years ago. I have worked with him many times and asked him for advice and I have worked with Peter as well.
‘’Both Mike and Peter have been inspirational to me to continue on the referee pathway and to see their accomplishments I often asked myself ‘why not me?’’’ she says. ‘’Top competition makes you more adaptable and you realise the enormity of football at a larger scale, the different styles and tactics of play.”
Fiji’s Finau Vulivuli has opened doors onto the world stage for Oceania’s female referees and Keighley is effusive in her praise for her colleague.
‘’Finau is famed for blazing the pathway for female match officials for the last couple of years already so it would be great to continue to put OFC’s name out there.
’Finau and I are in regular communication and we try to support each other the best we can. It’s important that we make women aware there is definitely a pathway to the highest level if they take up refereeing,” she says.
Keighley is part of the refereeing team based in American Samoa and joins Salesh Chand of Fiji, Hillary Ani of Papua New Guinea and Averii Jacques of Tahiti in officiating matches involving the co-hosts, Tahiti, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.