The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) has recently completed its first ever Referee Assistance Program in Fiji aimed at increasing the quality, consistency and uniformity of Referees throughout the confederation.
The five day Refereeing and Refereeing Instructor Course was led by FIFA/OFC Referee Development Officer Massimo Raveino and FIFA Instructor Neil Poloso at the Dr. Sahu Kahn Football Academy in Ba at the beginning of June.
The course participants included eight instructors and 20 Referee’s who are considered the elite officials in Fiji.
Poloso said the participants responded very well to the course and worked hard to achieve the course objectives.
“We wanted to increase the quality of referee instructors and to improve the performance, consistency and uniformity of elite referees and assistant referees in this member association.”
“We are also trying to establish and fortify referee development programs in member associations and this course went a long way to achieve that.”
The five days of intense work would begin with a theoretical session in the morning from 8am-12.30pm followed by a practical three hour session after lunch.
Poloso and Raveino plan to implement similar courses of this nature in each member association once every year to improve the overall quality of referees in Oceania.
Group Photo opening ceremony – sitting from left: 3rd: Chandra Segran (FFA RDO), 4th. Massimo Raveino (FIFA/OFC RDO), 5th: Ba City Mayor, 6th. FFA Vice President Vinod Patel and 7th. Neil N Poloso (FIFA Instructor))