Happy New Year!

To kick things off with our first bulletin of 2024, on behalf of the Society, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Well…we’ve had some rain over the last few days, which has led to burst rivers along with flooded ground. This will see some of the weekends’ games postponed, by the picture, courtesy of the BBC, below I think it is safe to say Rugby won’t be taking place at Hereford 🙁

If your weekend game is postponed, please remember to drop a note / text / email / what’s app etc to Vince or Mike for Saturdays, Alex for Sundays and Phil for midweek fixtures so they can update WTR. Details of contact numbers etc can be found on our website by clicking here.

Reflections of a Retired Referee

Some of new will know that one of our long standing referees – John Kelly, (Kel), hung up his whistle towards the back end of last year. Kel has very kindly sent us his reflections; on reading the content I was more than happy to share this it offers great insight for both new and existing referees.

“As a new referee we (should seek and) get feedback from players and coaches. From time to time we will get less biased (and more informed) feedback from a referee Developer. Not all Developer’s advice will work for us individually, so we should take and try it keeping what is useful and discard what doesn’t work for us.

Don’t try to be the next Wayne Barnes – be the first you – and the best you that you can be. We can only manage the players we can see – so position yourself to maximise the number of players you can see and, therefore, manage.

Self-reflection after a match is really valuable:

• Is the score a fair reflection of the abilities of both teams as demonstrated during the match in both attack and defence?
• Could I have gotten away with less whistle?
• Should I have blown more whistle?
• Were there undercurrents that led to a flare up/brawl that I should have detected earlier and managed before that flare up/brawl occurred?
• Did I make any one decision that affected the result and if so am I happy that that decision was correct?

Personally, my objective was to create the forum that allowed the players to express themselves in both attack and defence as long as they did so legally. Hence I focused heavily on offside and played lots of advantage. For me, with a detailed understanding of the principles of each law, most of the technical detail fell into place.”

New Referees

It’s been great to see on our social media pages new referees asking questions about getting games, managing WTR etc as they start their journeys into officiating.

Our website has a page designated to our Referees called ‘Referee Hub‘, this hopefully has all the details required to get started, covering:

• Who’s the Ref (WTR)
• Getting games – setting availability
• Claiming Expenses
• Where to get new kit

If anything is missing please let me know and I can make the necessary changes or make this clearer for you to find.

I am also supporting the Match Official Development team, currently due to injury, whereby I’m happy to come out and assist / assess new referees with their first few matches. If you’d like to get in touch with me please complete the form below and we can explore further.

The Society currently runs an offer whereby we will supply a free North Mids society jersey, and following the completion of 5 society fixtures we will reimburse referee course fees. If you would like more information surrounding this please drop me through your details using the form below.

Contact Visibility in WTR

To end this weeks’ bulletin can all referees ensure that their contact details are set to visible within WTR. When editing / amending your contact details there are a few boxes that need to remain unticked:

• Leave ‘Hide All’ unticked
• Leave ‘Hide Mobile’ unticked
• Fill in your preferred contact method – i.e. Mobile
• If you prefer text message select ‘Text by Default’

The reason for asking for this to be amended is so Fixture Secretaries can contact the referee to confirm the game. If they cannot see the details they have no way of confirming the fixture with you which can sometimes lead to fixtures not being fulfilled.

Any questions with regards this please let me know.

Finally, hopefully you have all seen the social posts surrounding our next Training Event to be held at Old Hales on Tuesday evening, we look forward to seeing as many as possible there covering Refs, Watchers, Developers, YMO’s and Parents.

Enjoy your weekend and happy reffing!