Gavin Badger was an Australian
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...
referee
A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other tit ...
in the
National Rugby League. He controlled over 300 NRL matches.
Refereeing career
Badger grew up in
Redfern, New South Wales and is the only NRL full-time referee with an indigenous background.
He made his NRL debut as a referee during a Brisbane vs South Sydney game at Suncorp Stadium in round 17 of 2004. In 2006 he controlled his first international match, a
World Cup qualification match between
Fiji and
Tonga
Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...
. Badger has also controlled
City vs Country Origin matches in 2009 and 2014 and the
2010 and
2011 All Stars match
The 2011 All Stars Match was the second of the annual representative exhibition match played between the Indigenous All Stars and the NRL All Stars which was held on the 12 of February 2011 at the Gold Coast's Skilled Park. The game was won ...
es.
[
His wife, ]Kasey Badger
Kasey Badger is an Australian rugby league referee and the first woman to referee a match in the Men's Rugby League World Cup.
Raised in Parramatta, Badger took up refereeing at an early age after having to make the decision between being a p ...
, is also a rugby league referee. On 21 October 2012, the day of their second wedding anniversary, they jointly refereed an international match between Thailand and the Philippines.
On 6 August 2017, Badger became the fifth referee to control 300 first grade matches in Australia, following Bill Harrigan,