Tahitian referee Norbert Hauata, one of the Oceania region’s leading officials, will take centre stage in the middle for Wednesday’s clash between the Montenegro and Singapore U-15 sides. He will be assisted by Kiwi Mark Rule and Fiji’s Ravinesh Kumar, who will take care of a line each.
The trio are OFC’s only referee representatives at the event and took charge during an earlier men’s group match between Bolivia and Haiti, an encounter Bolivia won 9-0.
Hauata was kept busy during that match, issuing three yellow cards – two for Haiti and one for Bolivia.
The 31-year-old and Rule had both officiated in international matches before but the Youth Olympics is Kumar’s first taste of action outside Oceania.
Kumar is in his fifth year of refereeing and his goal is to emulate New Zealander Paul Hester by making it to a FIFA World Cup.
Hauata has a lot more experience under his belt and is a veteran of three O-League finals – 2008, 2009 and 2010. He has also controlled Olympic qualification games, as well as qualifiers for the FIFA U-20 and U-17 World Cups.
The father-of-three began refereeing 12 years ago and has been on the FIFA list for three years.
His Kiwi colleague Mark Rule was one of Hester’s assistant referees at the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa – the other was fellow New Zealander Jan Hendrik-Hintz – and has also been involved with O-League matches.
He was on standby for the FIFA World Cup 2010 as the reserve assistant referee for Hester’s OFC trio, which officiated in the Group B clash between Korea Republic and Greece.
Hauata, Kumar and Rule are not the only ones flying the flag for Oceania in Singapore.
The Vanuatu U-15 men’s team have finished fifth after beating Zimbabwe 2-0 in the fifth-place playoff while the Papua New Guinea U-15 women missed out on achieving the same placing after losing their playoff to Trinidad and Tobago on penalties.