Youth players and volunteers become qualified referees with Cornwall FA working in partnership with Wadebridge Town Youth and Truro School.

Recently the current landscape of refereeing has been in the spotlight with the Respect The Ref campaign which aims to increase the respect referees receive to help overcome the referee shortage across the country. In particular, Cornwall FA have recognised the need to further support local referees the introduction of referee support meetings, introducing a referee mental health champion in Davey Green and more recently working in partnership with local leagues to provide discounted referee courses.

Following the introduction of discounted referee courses with local leagues, an encouraging number of people have started to take their first steps into refereeing. Cornwall FA were delighted to work in partnership with Wadebridge Town Youth and Truro School to run a 2 referee courses to train their youth players, students and volunteers to become qualified referees.

The two courses, delivered by Lee Swabey, Luke Wilkes and Ray Brown has seen over 20 new qualified youth referees aiming to take their first steps into refereeing.

Lee Swabey, Cornwall FA Referee Development Officer added, “it’s been really positive to see so many young people attend the recent referee courses delivered. Football can provide many different opportunities aside from playing the game, such as refereeing, so to be able to help train and qualify these young people to take their first steps into refereeing is brilliant.

The courses covered different aspects such as the laws of the game and the different signals involved in refereeing, so we are looking forward to supporting these young referees during their future games”.

With the newly qualified referees being aged under 18, Cornwall FA would like to remind everyone of the Purple Shirts campaign launched in 2019 to identify referees who are under 18.

Cornwall FA would also like to thank Truro School and Wadebridge Town Youth for their support.

If you are interested in taking your first steps into refereeing, please click here for more information or contact lee.swabey@cornwallfa.com