The Third Team Workshop

Cornwall FA Referees attend online mental health workshops

Cornish referees engage in discussions around mental health with The Third Team and Cornwall FA

Over the last 2 weeks, referees from Cornwall have attended 2 different online workshops that aimed to provide an opportunity to discuss mental health and strategies to deal with difficult situations within matches.

The Third Team, an organisation created to support referee development aims to support referees by making them more aware about all things related to Resilience and mental toughness to help improve their mental health and performance on the pitch.

Last week, Nathan Sherrat (Referee Educator and Managing Director at The Third Team) delivered a workshop titled Mental Toughness: ‘Parking It and Move On’ to referees across Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Devon.

The Third Team Workshop

Cornwall FA’s Referee Development Officer Lee Swabey attended the workshop and said, “it was great to see lots of you join us online last week to talk about mental toughness, we would like to thank Nathan Sherratt from The Third Team for presenting and giving our referees some strategies to help them deal with ‘controlling the controllable’ and ‘dealing with a difficult incident”.

Following on from this workshop, yesterday Cornwall FA’s Refereeing Mental Health Champion Davey Green delivered an online mental health workshop. It was brilliant to again see a well-attended meeting with referees from across the county engaging in positive discussions throughout.

The workshop focused on the following discussions:

  1. What challenges have you faced as an Assistant Referee?
  2. When and why could players crowd around you and how could this be prevented?
  3. What support do you expect from the FA/Leagues?

Mental Health Workshop

An attending referee expressed their appreciation by adding, “I just to say thanks to Davey Green for tonight’s mental health meeting. Wasn’t sure what to expect but was really worthwhile discussion and I’m looking forward to attending the next one. I would recommend this workshop for anyone that wasn’t able/didn’t attend.

Well done Davey Green, a great meeting, keep up the good work”.

If you are interested in future referee development workshops or are looking to take a more active role in refereeing you can contact lee.swabey@cornwallfa.com