CBRA - 2006 Annual Report

DIRECTOR OF REFEREES’ REPORT Mr. John McCormack It is with pleasure that I submit the Director of Referees report to the members for season 2006. With one year under our belts Kim Archer, Bob Garwood and I set out to continue to improve our role in the development of referees in the district.

We looked at ways of improving the on-field performance of refereeing in both Saturday junior football and Sunday senior football with better evaluation and appraisal of the week-to-week performances to ensure we had the best referees in each grade and encourage the referees to be able to step up into the next grade.

One of the areas we focused on was increasing the number of Advisory Board members watching and evaluating fixtures on Saturdays. This enabled the referee to gain important feedback much earlier rather than being critically assessed from under 14s. This did not replace the vital mentoring work that the active senior members gave to newer members running prior to or after their games.

One area for improvement in 2007 will be the allocation of referees to semi final and finals in the Saturday competitions. This will be reviewed in the off-season. In the main the appointment of referees to finals was successful and we feel that the referees were appointed fairly and achieved the highest grade possible.

Congratulations to all referees who refereed in the finals series, you all performed at your best and the teams were allowed to play their best football to achieve the elusive goal of a premiership. The feedback from the District Club was very positive.

There are a number of people I would like to thank. Firstly, Bob Garwood has been on the Appointments Board for many years (while I was still running around a number of years ago) and when we formed the new role Bob put his hand up to assist the association yet again. Regretfully, Bob has now decided to step down from the Assistant Director of Referees’ role. He will be sadly missed as he has a vast amount of experience to call upon and was invaluable in assessing referee performance. I’m sure the referees will see Bob sitting on the sideline at some stage throughout the next season and if there has been a sub-par performance the referee will enjoy a blunt but fair assessment.

Thanks also to Kim who opened her house every alternate Monday evening and put in many long hours at those Monday night meetings and most Saturday mornings watching and helping the newer referees learn their craft in the Mini/Mod fixtures.

Her work is crucial as the referees move into tougher games in the seasons ahead.

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