A&H

Applying for multiple leagues

Mada

Active Member
I'm fresh out of my training and as a follow up I was sent an email with a list containing the contacts from all of the local leagues. I picked a couple of Saturday leagues and a Sunday league.

Over the weekend I received some fixtures assignments via the FA full time website. One of which is as the assistant referee next week in a premier division game which I think will be great experience for me at this stage to learn from a more experienced ref.

My question is whether applying for multiple leagues is a good idea? I'm unsure how sophisticated the FA full time website is and whether my availability/assigned games is shared between different leagues? Otherwise I can see a situation occurring where I could potentially be double booked (i.e. League A has already scheduled a game for the 1st September and League B goes off the availability I sent in via a spreadsheet and double books me).

Given that I'm new to this I wasn't sure how much need these Saturday leagues would have for junior refs but it seems they are quite happy to give me a chance
 
The Referee Store
Yeah I would make sure you don’t tell different leagues you’re free on the same day or you run the risk of being double booked and then awkwardly having to tell one of them you’re not free despite having previously informed them you were. I normally stick to one Saturday league but I have a couple of Sunday ones I’ll do - I’ll let my preferred league know my availability and then inform other leagues if there are any weeks when they don’t appoint me to games and that prevents any confusion. Leagues almost certainly won’t communicate to each other so you’ll have to be on top of it yourself. RE Saturday leagues - one of the best ways to improve quickly I feel! Often working with more experienced refs, you can really learn what works and what doesn’t for you. Hope this helps somewhat
 
Thanks for the advice, in hindsight I should have just applied for a single league it seems. Although the leagues won't talk to one another, do we know if the full time systems knows I have a fixture on a day and once assigned removes it from being available to the other league? I'm hoping that's the case, maybe a question for the RDO.

I guess my way out of this is to do a few games, figure out which league I prefer and then ask just to notify the other league if I haven't been scheduled for anything.
 
No, the Full Time system will not automatically remove you from other appointments.

The way it (referee appointment) works is this:

Each league has a referee appointments Officer. You tell them when you are available. They then look at the upcoming fixtures and assign you to a game if appropriate. They input this assignment onto Full Time which then emails you details of the fixture. Some leagues will appoint for the month, some only for the week ahead.

The above is a simplified version, there are exceptions and caveats - e.g. County Cups, in some leagues teams appoint refs themselves, some appointments officers may cover more than one league (e.g the appointments Officer for my Sunday league also appoints for the local veterans league - I’m in both pools of referees and will happily do either, but knows I can’t do both simultaneously!)

The bottom line is don’t rely on Full Time to avoid any clashes. Maybe initially offer every other week to each league until you decide which is your favourite. By all means, if one league doesn’t appoint you, get in touch with the appointments Officer of the other league the see if he has any games that need covering.
 
Agree with the others, Full Time is not your friend here. It's perfectly fine to be on multiple league panels, for example I'm on 3 Saturday leagues, with a 4th midweek league that very occasionally does Saturdays and a 5th league that's Sunday mornings. For me, one of those Saturday pools appoint me as an AR for a step 6 and a step 5 league, meaning they'll do appointments over a month advance. If they don't appoint me, I'll offer the date to one of the other two leagues - one who will definitely use me as a ref, and one who will use me most of the time in either role.

It's fiddly, requires some admin and does ignore the occasional FA/county appointment, but it does mean I can get occasional games at a good level and still fill up the other weekends when I want to.
 
You can manage being registered with more than 1 league. what you need to do is as soon as one league appoint you to a game is to advise the other league(s) of your unavailability immediately to avoid a double booking. This happens to me at the end of the season when all of the leagues I am with are trying to squeeze midweek games in and could all use the same night. Only once have I happened to be double booked when I was put on 2 games by different leagues within the same hour so I did first game and explained what had happened to other league who were fine about it.
 
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