New Zealand Football Referee Development Officer Ken Wallace oversaw the workshop with all seven Referee Development Officers from each of NZF’s federations in attendance as he stressed the importance of the get together for all senior RDO’s.
“Our key objectives for the workshop were to discuss best practice, exchange ideas and improve our strategies to recruit and retain referees and to communicate new ideas,” Wallace said.
The workshop agenda included the presentation of federation reports, recruitment, competency and accreditation programmes, budgets and feedback on sessions covering Advantage, Challenges, Dissent, Handball and Teamwork.
Wallace said he was impressed by the innovative work being performed around the country but admitted there were many challenges to be overcome and improving female recruitment remained high on the list of all federations, he added.
“There are many positives in the work being done by the federation RDOs to recruit and retain referees. We’ve heard an example where a federation has used youth referees to access and appeal to high schools, which is an innovative and smart approach.
“There’s also a lot of positive elements occuring in the recruitment of club-based and community referees, then converting those people to become active match officials at higher levels.
“I’m encouraged by the work being performed out there in mentoring referees to retain them, and our ongoing work in weekly or fortnightly coaching sessions for referees. The big one for us is the coordination with Futsal incorporating it into the federation structure.
“It’s also key for us to get more women into refereeing. There are a lot of tremendous opportunities there for females aspiring to be match officials but it remains a big challenge for us in this area,” Wallace said.
New Zealand Football has approximately 1,000 active referees with 2,000 club-based referees operating throughout the country during any given weekend which highlighted links with an important aspect of the FIFA U-20 Legacy Project – Federation programme, as Wallace explains.
“The FIFA U-20 Legacy Project has a federation programme and it is part of the forthcoming FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand. As part of that, we have a FIFA Referee Instructor, Steve Bennett, who is coming out to New Zealand to visit each federation conducting courses and coaching sessions around the country.
“Its a really good initiative which has worked well in the past with other former top flight referees like David Elleray and Keith Hackett also coming out to New Zealand.
“It’s an important way of keeping people up to date with important ideas and trends in coaching and training. It’s also a very important incentive for those referees with ambition to officiate at the highest levels.
“Steve has vast experience and runs courses in Africa and Oceania with tremendous contemporary resources and we’re sure it will be an exciting and fruitful exercise,” Wallace added.
Bennett will visit Central Football twice with a session each in Napier and Palmerston North where Central Football RDO David Lawrie says history shows a big impact can be made citing the rise to prominence of referee Anna Marie Keighley.
“In the past we had David Elleray come to Palmerston North and I took a very young Anna-Marie Keighley to see his course. Now Anna-Marie is one of Oceania’s top female referees with top FIFA event experience. Hopefully, after Steve visits, we can get some more Anna-Marie Keighleys out there refereeing,” Lawrie said.
Lawrie, himself a former referee, also spoke of the overall value the Referee Development officer workshop brings to his workload and that of his colleagues from across the seven federations.
“It’s very important to see what the rest of the country is doing in their respective areas and take the best ideas and concepts back to implement in your own federation,” he said, “its vital to know what’s going on around New Zealand and make improvements where possible.”
For more on New Zealand football visit www.nzfootball.co.nz