Age no longer a barrier to a referee's promotion aspects.

[matty1194]

A email has been sent out to all Societies from the RFU regarding the use of an officials age as a barrier to prevent promotion through the gradings system is as they put it "would be blatant age discrimination which is illegal"

Here is a link to the email that was posted on the Army page just incase some Societies still have secret email chains that some officials are not involved in.

http://www.armyrugbyunion.org.uk/wp...ing-to-the-grading-of-referees-2015-04-07.pdf

 

[crossref]

excellent!

in practice, though, I don't really have any sense that age is factor when assessing a referee's performance or ability on the day -- but I do think it is a factor in allocating coaching and development resources.

An example : two relatively inexperienced refs, both been reffing a year or so, both graded 12, one of them is 19, the other is 53.
At their next assessment I can beleive that age is no factor and performance will determine if they make 11 : but over the next three seasons, in terms of investing the limited coaching/development resources needed to get to L8, L6, National panel -- it's clear that those resources are better spent on the young guy ... isn't it?

 

[SimonSmith]

No ****ing shit. Some of us have been saying that for a while.

I have no problem being overtaken by a younger referee as long as - and here's the critical piece - he or she is better than me, or close to 'as good as but boatloads of potential'.

Some organizing bodies, not looking at Colorado at all, seem to have forgotten that piece.

 

[crossref]

yes
- early over-promotion because there is potential seems senseless
- investment in training/development becaue there is potential semes sensible and if it works we would expect rapid promotion to follow.

 

[OB..]

Discrimination will only be justified if the discriminatory step is necessary and appropriate to achievea legitimate aim. Refusing to grade a referee on the basis of age is unlikely to be deemed necessaryor appropriate.

Is it a legitimate aim to get x years service out of a referee before he is too old to continue so as to recoup all the resources ploughed into developing him? I suspect that might raise its head, and the answer will be "well he was not quite as good as so-and-so".

(Cynic? Me?!)