A&H

Next Season/ Pre season

fmuhammad

New Member
Level 7 Referee
hi guys hope everyone has been keeping safe.

I only started my refereeing journey in January so I am quite confused as to how pre season and stuff works, and the covid situationhas made it more confusing lol.

will games just start as normal on August 1st? heard nothing from county FA either except to re register
 
Last edited:
The Referee Store
The leagues and County FA's will decide when they start the next season . . . my local Supply League have announced 05 September, for example.
Each youth league will make decisions and introduce a set of Covid rules to suit the local situation.
Start dates vary anyway around the country, dependent upon how many teams each division has, etc., so there is no single date to answer your question.
As long as the Referee Appointments Officer has your details listed, and you have registered with the County FA for 2020-2021, you will hear once they have a start date agreed. If unsure re the Appointments Officer, send an e-mail to confirm you are available and ready to go.
 
No leagues in England will start before 1st September. Friendlies can start from 1st August, but it is very rare that an appointments officer will appoint to these and normally the home club secretary contacts local referees to ask them if they are available.
 
Pre-seaso friendlies- clubs will organise their own refs. What tends to happen is clubs will get in touch with refs that they know and see if they can book them in, quite often for all their home games.

if you’ve only been ref-in since January, you may not be on the radar of many clubs, so be pro-active and get in touch with some clubs and see if they need a ref for pre-seasons.
 
Pre-seaso friendlies- clubs will organise their own refs. What tends to happen is clubs will get in touch with refs that they know and see if they can book them in, quite often for all their home games.

if you’ve only been ref-in since January, you may not be on the radar of many clubs, so be pro-active and get in touch with some clubs and see if they need a ref for pre-seasons.

Big fan of this, I got 13 out of 14 friendlies next month by replying to club requests just on Twitter. One team with First and reserves booked me for all home games for both teams!

Bear in mind that sometimes, if you have been hard work with teams during the season for whatever reason, they may not invite you for friendlies! It literally pays to be nice to people..
 
I'll do a few youth games and maybe one (maximum two) choice OA friendlies, purely to get my eye-in
Otherwise, I prefer to swerve them for a number of reasons
 
Big fan of this, I got 13 out of 14 friendlies next month by replying to club requests just on Twitter. One team with First and reserves booked me for all home games for both teams!

Bear in mind that sometimes, if you have been hard work with teams during the season for whatever reason, they may not invite you for friendlies! It literally pays to be nice to people..
I'm going to slightly contradict that final statement.....

Above all else, managers don't want serious injuries in pre-season. If you've refereed a team during the previous season and have "looked after" them vs a team of cloggers, you're going straight to the top of their friendly referee list. And that holds true even if you had to book a few of their players in the process, a couple of justified cautions aren't going to suddenly make a strong and fair referee a bad thing.
 
Bear in mind that pre season friendlies are for your own preparation too. I usually get more requests that I can deal with so I'm a bit selective about what I accept. Depending on how ready you feel it might be best to avoid a potential difficult first fixture even if it is only a friendly.
 
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