A&H

The FA Refereeing Course

T

The Ginger Ref

Active Member
Not sure if this has been covered on here before, but as someone who has completed the refereeing course I wanted to ask whether others felt grossly unprepared going into their first games?

IMHO the course is simply too short, whilst I am not expecting the course to cover every minutae of refereeing, but I have be compiling a list of things that I am surprised aren't covered in the course, as for me they seem like fundamental aspects of refereeing.
  • Time keeping
  • Pitch inspection
  • Player inspection
  • Substitution procedure
  • Sin Bins! (The FA's flagship respect programme isn't even covered)
As someone who has played a bit, I believe my playing experience will enable me to fake it until I make it, however, there were many on the course who do not have the wealth of experience available, especially junior referees. Whilst I accept there is an aspect of "learning on the job", with all the issues with abuse, dissent and even assault. I'm not sure junior and amateur football is the greatest place to learn on the job, especially for those without that prior experience and for junior referees, life experience.

I would like to say that the trainers, RDO and support network are not including in this, their support has been invaluable. The trainers especially doing whatever they could with the 1.3 days they had available and having to deliver the FA's rigid learning pathway.
 
The Referee Store
I feel you hit the nail on the head- the training hardly covers anything, and most of it has been relegated to the online modules, which makes it very hard to ask questions and learn more than just the basic facts.
 
The course is in my opinion, completely made for someone entering with a playing baxkground. You're meant to know the fundamentals of football, and the course takes you to thinking like a referee instead of a player.

Coming from a non-playing background onto the course would be very bewildering I'd imagine.
 
The Ginger Ref said:
Not sure if this has been covered on here before, but as someone who has completed the refereeing course I wanted to ask whether others felt grossly unprepared going into their first games?

IMHO the course is simply too short, whilst I am not expecting the course to cover every minutae of refereeing, but I have be compiling a list of things that I am surprised aren't covered in the course, as for me they seem like fundamental aspects of refereeing.
  • Time keeping
  • Pitch inspection
  • Player inspection
  • Substitution procedure
  • Sin Bins! (The FA's flagship respect programme isn't even covered)
As someone who has played a bit, I believe my playing experience will enable me to fake it until I make it, however, there were many on the course who do not have the wealth of experience available, especially junior referees. Whilst I accept there is an aspect of "learning on the job", with all the issues with abuse, dissent and even assault. I'm not sure junior and amateur football is the greatest place to learn on the job, especially for those without that prior experience and for junior referees, life experience.

I would like to say that the trainers, RDO and support network are not including in this, their support has been invaluable. The trainers especially doing whatever they could with the 1.3 days they had available and having to deliver the FA's rigid learning pathway.
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In Hampshire we cover all those 5 subjects in the course, with a mix of practical and classroom learning.
 
I agree the starting course is shocking.

Should definitely be better considering there was some crazy stat about how many people have sat the course and gone on to ref 10 games (it was a super low percentage I've completely forgotten).

But to make it longer would make it more expensive and more of a time commitment that will put off some people off.
 
Spoke about this a few times on here but the course I did about 8 years ago was a complete waste of time. I found it frustrating and had to do the job of the chaps running the course a couple of times. Nothing to do with the subject matter, this was a case of 2 instructors who were too weak to deal with the roughly 40 or so people on the course, of which 3 of us were adults. I had to stand up and shut the kids up twice. They weren't interested in refereeing and the RDOs were feeble in their attempts to stop them messing around and ruining it for those that were. That's not a criticism, they're not teachers and are probably very underpaid for dealing with so many kids at a weekend who are there solely because they don't want to be camping instead on the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

I can't speak for other people, but I learnt very little on the course. I learnt far more from resources like this and going watching non league games and watching the officials.
 
I think it depends when and where you did the course. My one in London was pretty good. Things like substitution procedure are unlikely to be followed at the first games you do in a park so I don’t mind that I had to look that up for myself.

Refereeing (as debated at length in another thread) is a self employed hobby/eventual job and so you are expected to keep up with changes and research the standards you’re expected to meet.

The course could definitely be better but I think it would be better if the course leaders simply said “okay we’ve covered these things, but you’ll need to get up to speed with all the LOTG and comp rules”

We helpfully covered things for which there is little to no information on compared to laws or procedures:

- whistle technique
- managing angry players/coaches in conversation
- foul recognition and card recognition
- preemptive actions you can take to prevent a bad challenge

None of these things are effectively taught via a blog or booklet, so I’m glad we covered these over say the penalty shootout procedure which I just looked up later.
 
OnlyUseMeWhistle said:
I think it depends when and where you did the course. My one in London was pretty good. Things like substitution procedure are unlikely to be followed at the first games you do in a park so I don’t mind that I had to look that up for myself.

Refereeing (as debated at length in another thread) is a self employed hobby/eventual job and so you are expected to keep up with changes and research the standards you’re expected to meet.

The course could definitely be better but I think it would be better if the course leaders simply said “okay we’ve covered these things, but you’ll need to get up to speed with all the LOTG and comp rules”

We helpfully covered things for which there is little to no information on compared to laws or procedures:

- whistle technique
- managing angry players/coaches in conversation
- foul recognition and card recognition
- preemptive actions you can take to prevent a bad challenge

None of these things are effectively taught via a blog or booklet, so I’m glad we covered these over say the penalty shootout procedure which I just looked up later.
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The course material may have been excellent, we just didn't hear half of it.

But ultimately the course is a stage 1 process. It's the beginning. The real learning starts on the field of play, and the best way to speed up your learning is to be an AR ASAP & watch other games.
 
Ben448844 said:
The course material may have been excellent, we just didn't hear half of it.

But ultimately the course is a stage 1 process. It's the beginning. The real learning starts on the field of play, and the best way to speed up your learning is to be an AR ASAP & watch other games.
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Agree with that on being an AR. As someone on the spectrum, some of the “obvious” stuff like finding appointment officers and getting games as AR took me longer because I just couldn’t figure it out. Now I AR half the time 😂
 
OnlyUseMeWhistle said:
Agree with that on being an AR. As someone on the spectrum, some of the “obvious” stuff like finding appointment officers and getting games as AR took me longer because I just couldn’t figure it out. Now I AR half the time 😂
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I found my own appointments/leagues etc. All the qualifying games on the course went to the kids who had made it clear that they were only there because its was the DoE award and it was better than camping in the woods. The course was just something I had to do before going out and learning the trade myself.
 
A lot of learning as you go. Currently finding out a lot of the basics of being a lino from feedback on observer reports.

Got pulled up for squatting down a little during fast breaks.

But that is just how it is.
 
ChasObserverRefDeveloper said:
In Hampshire we cover all those 5 subjects in the course, with a mix of practical and classroom learning.
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This is interesting because on my course the trainers mentioned a couple of times that they have to deliver the FA script and can’t stray from it.

It was explicitly said that Sin Bins are not covered in the course.

Ben448844 said:
Spoke about this a few times on here but the course I did about 8 years ago was a complete waste of time. I found it frustrating and had to do the job of the chaps running the course a couple of times. Nothing to do with the subject matter, this was a case of 2 instructors who were too weak to deal with the roughly 40 or so people on the course, of which 3 of us were adults. I had to stand up and shut the kids up twice. They weren't interested in refereeing and the RDOs were feeble in their attempts to stop them messing around and ruining it for those that were. That's not a criticism, they're not teachers and are probably very underpaid for dealing with so many kids at a weekend who are there solely because they don't want to be camping instead on the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
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My course was exactly the same, and the trainers said this is the norm now that you’re unlikely to have more that 10% of a cohort being adults.

Similar to you, the juniors clearly weren’t interested in refereeing, I put this mainly down to confidence but it was clear they hadn’t really absorbed the LOTGs

However, unlike yours, they were basically silent for the whole course, didn’t ask any questions and it just felt like they were going through the motions which seemed like a huge waste of their time and the trainers.

Not sure if they were there to avoid DofE, whether clubs or the CFA are giving out free places or some other kind of initiative (it definitely wasn’t a minority initiative) because they certainly weren’t there because they were interested in becoming a referee.

I may be doing them a disservice, but I highly doubt they will go and do the 5 qualifying games and I have a huge level of sympathy for them because if I’m feeling unprepared/untrained for the matches with a good 25 years of playing experience, I can only imagine how they are feeling and I just can’t envision a 13/14/15 year old being able to control a game and behaviour with the limited training they have been given.
 
Instead of throwing newly qualified referees out into the wild for their first six games, I wonder whether it would be beneficial sending them out with another level 7/6, just for a game or two, to watch/observe/see some of the intricacies and 'unwritten/untaught' stuff?

In my first game, I was so nervous to even introduce myself to the home team, ask for my match fee, ask for the match ball(s)... watching someone else do it would have been really beneficial.

There was a question asked in this forum a few weeks ago (something like "what do I do at half time?") which made me smile. Although it maybe really obvious to us, as a newly qualified official that's something you just don't get taught / think about. Thankfully we have this forum :)
 
sunnycrofter said:
Instead of throwing newly qualified referees out into the wild for their first six games, I wonder whether it would be beneficial sending them out with another level 7/6, just for a game or two, to watch/observe/see some of the intricacies and 'unwritten/untaught' stuff?

In my first game, I was so nervous to even introduce myself to the home team, ask for my match fee, ask for the match ball(s)... watching someone else do it would have been really beneficial.

There was a question asked in this forum a few weeks ago (something like "what do I do at half time?") which made me smile. Although it maybe really obvious to us, as a newly qualified official that's something you just don't get taught / think about. Thankfully we have this forum :)
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It would but the reality is that there's not enough referees in most counties to cover all the games never mind use some for mentoring purposes. I highly recommend speaking to your RDO & asking to work as an AR asap. You will be working with and learning off a referee in the middle who will almost certainly be a minimum level 5 & probably an experienced AR on the other side too. You'll learn a years worth of lessons in a month.
 
Ben448844 said:
It would but the reality is that there's not enough referees in most counties to cover all the games never mind use some for mentoring purposes.
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I get your point, there is a real problem with referee availability. My idea wouldn't be official mentoring, as such. A newly qualified referee signs up to their local league, and instead of being put straight onto a fixture, they just tag along to a fixture that already has an experienced ref allocated and see what's what.

I've only been refereeing two seasons, but I would gladly have someone tag along to one of my games on a Saturday afternoon if they wanted, so they could see how things work.
 
Ben448844 said:
Spoke about this a few times on here but the course I did about 8 years ago was a complete waste of time. I found it frustrating and had to do the job of the chaps running the course a couple of times. Nothing to do with the subject matter, this was a case of 2 instructors who were too weak to deal with the roughly 40 or so people on the course, of which 3 of us were adults. I had to stand up and shut the kids up twice. They weren't interested in refereeing and the RDOs were feeble in their attempts to stop them messing around and ruining it for those that were. That's not a criticism, they're not teachers and are probably very underpaid for dealing with so many kids at a weekend who are there solely because they don't want to be camping instead on the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

I can't speak for other people, but I learnt very little on the course. I learnt far more from resources like this and going watching non league games and watching the officials.
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When I did my course I was a “kid” and I’m happy to admit that a small part of my motivation to do the course so soon when I turned 14 was to complete my DofE Bronze skills section…

Unlike a lot of the other people on the course however I’d wanted to be a referee since I was about 8. At the start of the session they asked about 4 or 5 people why they were doing the course. All but one of those people said “money”. In fairness, the people leading the course were relatively skilled. One of them was also a teacher so they could control the classroom.

Despite this I still came a way from the course massively underprepared. The content covered doesn’t cover even some of the basics, the course is too short, class sizes are too big. I was one of the last people to do the course before they put even more of it online - I can’t imagine how underprepared it leaves you now.

If it wasn’t for this forum I honestly don’t think I’d still be refereeing. I do think the course needs more of a focus on not just the laws of the game, but the impact refereeing can have on you mentally and how to manage/rationalise unfounded criticism and insults.
 
sunnycrofter said:
I get your point, there is a real problem with referee availability. My idea wouldn't be official mentoring, as such. A newly qualified referee signs up to their local league, and instead of being put straight onto a fixture, they just tag along to a fixture that already has an experienced ref allocated and see what's what.

I've only been refereeing two seasons, but I would gladly have someone tag along to one of my games on a Saturday afternoon if they wanted, so they could see how things work.
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This would be very helpful for new officials. In my first game, I had zero idea what to do before the game. Before the most recent game I refereed, I saw a newly qualified official who was my age struggling also on a different pitch at the same venue. I asked him if he wanted to watch what I did before he did and he looked 100% confident when he went and did it afterwards. This definitely needs to be done if possible.
 
SammyT5 said:
Unlike a lot of the other people on the course however I’d wanted to be a referee since I was about 8.
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People either don't believe me or get really confused when I tell them this. I don't know why refereeing appeals so much to others similar to myself, but sometimes it just does.
 
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