Minimum age to be a referee

[Phil E]

Our "Warwickshire Junior Whistlers" scheme, ran both ELRA and Mini/Midi courses last October, using council and RFU funding to pay for most of the course. We had 22 candidates aged 14 to 18.

We then got clubs to send us their Sunday fixture lists for U15 and below and we appoint to those games from our Junior Whistlers.
We have Society refs mentoring at their own clubs, to coach the new ref's, the clubs get free ref's on a Sunday instead of the coach.

They get a Junior Whistlers shirt for refereeing in after 5 games, which are being presented by Andrew Small in Feb.
Through the V-Rugby scheme they will get other kit depending on how many hours of refereeing they do.
The Society mentors get a nice coat to ID them and encourage them to take part.

They all get free membership to the Society until they are old enough, or have been passed to officiate at, adult games.

Next year the mini/midi refs will move up to ELRA and we wil get a new intake of both mini/midi and ELRA.

The long term prospect is to keep bringing new blood into the Society and into refereeing.

http://www.rfu.com/News/2011/November/NewsArticles/021111_warwicks_whistlers.aspx

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-warwickshire-sport/rugby-union/rugby-union-coventry-warwickshire/2011/10/25/warwickshire-junior-whistlers-training-more-than-20-young-refs-this-week-92746-29653894/

http://site.warwickshirerfu.co.uk/page.php?licenseKey=b2786a80fc157e068cc42b557ce6f831&ID=2138

 

[Davet]

Phil E
Now THAT sounds like a plan.

 

[Simon Thomas]

Phil E
Now THAT sounds like a plan.

It is Dave ! It is what Nigel Spencer set up as the Hampshire Young Officials scheme six years ago, which was then adopted by RFU as the template for national roll-out. And which Warwicks have taken to a new level - well done them.

We lost our Hampshire County Council and Hampshire & IOW Sports Council funding two years ago, and RFU funding through CB was stopped as it was needed elsewhere "in county" as the CB has had the same £65K budget from RFU for last three years. So we have had a holding operation for the last two seasons only.

We are trying through our Regional Referee Developement Officer and CTRefDevManager Mike Priestley to get it up and running again next season, but it is competing for funding with the University Society work (Southampton, Solent, Portsmouth & Winchester combined) which is finally taking off after three years hard prep work.

 

[ckuxmann]

Never mind