David Charles, a young 29 year old from a mixed parentage of Central and Milne Bay is the second game official to represent Papua New Guinea in officiating a FIFA World Cup competition. He has being chosen to officiate at this year’s Under 17 FIFA World Cup in Mexico this month. Before him was Hillary Ani who took the trip to the Caribbean in 2001 for the FIFA U-17 World Cup.
David starting refereeing in the year 2000 doing local matches and was inspired by Mr Ani’s trip to Trindad and Tobago. From there, PNG Football identified him for his performance and appointed him to attend a Referee course at the Football Academy in Lae. His commitment and perseverance paid off in 2008 when he was nominated by PNGFA to become a FIFA Assistant Referee and was successfully accepted by FIFA who issued him with a FIFA Assistant Referee badge.
In October, 2010 he was appointed to attend the OFC/FIFA Elite Referees Course in Auckland.
The journey begin straight after the Elite Referee course when he was then nominated to attend the Under 17 FIFA Qualifying Tournament early January, this year.
This year, Mr Charles was invited by Oceania Football Confederation to officiate at the O-League grand final match in New Zealand between Armicale and Auckland City FC in April. Straight after the O-League finals, the FIFA under 20 was staged when David was again requested to officiate as an Assistant referee the whole tournament in pool A where the 11 member associations from the Oceania region took part.
PNGFA Referee Development Officer, Job Minan said in an interview that David has passed most of his fitness training tests, both in PNG and New Zealand and deserves the trip to Mexico but would like Mr. Charles to prove himself to the job.
He travelled to Mexico in the company of fellow assistant referees from Tahiti and New Zealand on the 9th of this month.