Referee’s come together to discuss their future

Developing world-class match officials in the Pacific region was the driving factor for Oceania Football Confederation Referee Instructor’s Ken Wallace (New Zealand) and Massimo Raveino (Tahiti) as they coordinated a Referee Development Officer Seminar at the OFC headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand.

Referee Development Officer’s (RDO’s) from the OFC member associations of Cook Islands (Teariki Goodwin), Fiji (Segran Chandra), New Caledonia (Chanel Palaou), New Zealand (Ken Wallace), Papua New Guinea (Gidas Bayung), Tahiti (Massimo Raveino), Tonga (Tevita Vea), Samoa (Ben Lemana), and Solomon Islands (Neil Poloso) attended the four-day seminar which ran from 19 – 22 August.

Each RDO delivered a presentation with a view to defining what resources and prospective budget each national association needed to further develop their country’s referees in the future.

At the request of the OFC President Mr. Reynald Temarii, Wallace and Raveino are preparing a Referee Development Plan inline with the 12-year plan for the Confederation.

OFC Referee Fitness Instructor Alejo Perez Leguizamon – who was used by FIFA at the recent World Youth Championships in the Netherlands – also took the RDO’s through the new FIFA Referee’s Fitness Test.

At the conclusion of the seminar the Referee’s Committee outlined three key objectives for the plan; the recruitment of more referees; improved knowledge and skills of Referee Development Officers in national associations; and an increase in OFC referee’s at FIFA competitions.

The last objective is an area which Mr. Temarii is keen to see come to fruition with a view towards a strong OFC representation at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

“Referee development is one of the key areas of importance for our Confederation, we want as many of our top officials consistently appearing on the world stage, I am very confident we will be able to find the necessary funding to implement this plan,” said Temarii.

Wallace and Raveino will continue to work on the Referee Development Plan and will present to all 11 member associations at the OFC Congress and Workshop in Tahiti in November this year.