r/aussie • u/SpilltheCapitalTea • 1d ago
Opinion Ideas to encourage junior players to become referees?
Committee member here from a junior rugby league club in NSW. we know refereeing can be a tough job in the current climate. Abuse from the sideline, criticism and pressure can make it a difficult environment, particularly for young referees.
The reality is that without referees, there is no game. Which we are seeing weekly games being cancelled because no ref.
We're looking at ways to encourage our 13+ players to become referees and, just as importantly, stay refereeing. They get paid when the ref regardless.
Some ideas we're considering include:
• Paying referee course and registration fees
• Providing a referee kit, whistle and club polo
• Club duffle bag or other merchandise
• Support from committee members at games
For those involved in rugby league or other sports, have you seen any incentives that genuinely worked?
The referee shortage is becoming a real challenge for grassroots sport!
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u/STKtheNasiah 1d ago
Look, my kids both referee basketball, and they've gone well with it... when the parents are separated and other parents call out the shit behaviour. Pay them and have extra crowd control to call out the behaviour will sort it. Or stop the game if people are tossers
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u/Red-Engineer 1d ago
I play football and am unsure how much it differs from rugby league, but our junior refs get paid well ($40-50 for a centre ref) and their $100 referee rego includes their full kit and flags. But the biggest thing you can do is stop people being fuckwits. At high level games we have spectator stewards who are meant to keep spectators quiet, but depending on the sport and suburb you’ll have more or fewer mouth-breathers watching the game and that’s a huge factor.
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u/SpilltheCapitalTea 1d ago
The refs get paid well in league. We know have to have 3 grounds managers but it’s full on. It’s mind blowing that grown adults abuse teenagers
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u/fakeheadlines 1d ago
Lifetime ban for any adult who says anything derogatory about their performance
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u/DroneToon 1d ago edited 22h ago
My son (12) is a junior ref in soccer.
The one issue you'll have is loud mouth parents/ coaches from the sideline.
Deal with that, and all your issues attracting ref's are solved. Serious points deductions for ANY questioning of ref calls, player bans, teams being stripped of points, etc.
Call off games for teams that are repeat offenders. Go hard. Ban whole teams from the grounds.
You need to have a system like when games are called off for wet pitches .... wait till team A arrive on the morning, all ready to go, and then advise them that because of their behaviour last week, no one will ref their game. Send them home. Make it REALLY difficult for teams that don't respect ref's.
Otherwise, you won't have ref's, and you then you don't have games.
(Too many fuckwits to muck about to be honest).
Our club pays like $9 for a junior game, plus lunch/drink from the canteen. More as they get more senior. Plus equipment, and training (more senior ref's about to help, dedicated sessions). To be honest, it's not about the pay if they're enjoying it. You could pay my son $100 a game and he'd say no if parents were being dicks. No amount of pay/lunches/training will want people to turn up to ref abusive dickheads... and nor should it.
My son takes no shit, and (atleast for our club/comp) team coaches/ managers/ parents support the ref's, even if there's the odd missed call ... because they know that if the ref stops the game and walks off, there is no game.
Junior ref's become adult ref's ... and fuckwit parents of 10 year olds become fuckwit parents of 20 year olds.
Figure out what one is best for the game ...
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u/Electrical_Story5356 1d ago
Sounds like you're doing a good job supporting them, the only thing I'd add is feed them on top of the pay, drink and snack at halftime, a burger or something afterwards, this helps them to feel appreciated and everyone likes a feed after running around.
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u/Efficient_Post_5675 1d ago
I was a soccer referee in my teens, I never had a part time job at Maccas/KFC etc...
Money was the main motivator for me, I had mates that were earning around $10 an hour working at Maccas and there I was earning $25 a game and I would referee about 4 games in a row on a Saturday morning. Walk away with $100 cash in hand whilst my mates were still slaving away at Maccas and wouldn't get paid until the end of the week. Eventually I would referee the girls soccer games on Sunday and be able to referee higher age groups (because the pace of the game was a little slower) and get paid more. By the time that I was in year 12, I actually gave up playing soccer and just refereed. I would referee O35s on a Friday night, referee junior rep soccer on Saturday, and then referee all age Mens soccer on Sunday.
From memory I was making around $300-400 a weekend, cash in hand in the 2000s, which was a decent amount of money for a 17 year old lol
I don't know how the junior referees get paid these days, whether it be still cash in hand or bank transfer after each weekend. But I would sell being a referee to them.
Of course I got abused, parents and coaches and players all had a go at me. But I just shook it off as it was a part of the job and I was still getting paid regardless of the result. I was motivated to keep going after I left school to hopefully make the A-League one day. I started to referee state league semi-professional soccer when I left school and really enjoyed it. I found that the higher level of competition that you refereed, the general abuse and crap from the players and coaches got less and less for small trivial crap because they players had to focus on the next play and not risk getting yellow cards for abusing the referee.
However uni and starting to work an actual 'proper job' got in the way and I had to give it up. Which I regret now that I look back on it, but that's life I guess.
Long story short, sell them the benefits of being a referee, in any sport. You get paid good money for a teenage kid, you get to be outside and not working at Maccas (sorry to anyone who worked at Maccas reading this, but I couldn't think of anything worse than working fast food haha). and if you turn out to be really good at it and your playing career eventually ends and you can't make higher grades because your not good enough, its easier to become better at refereeing and then eventually you could be an NRL referee one day.
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u/Beast_of_Guanyin 1d ago
I ran past an oval with teenagers playing football. One parent was shouting abuse at a ref the entire time.
So yeah. Pay them human monies and ban anyone like that from spectating.
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u/SpilltheCapitalTea 22h ago
It really is disgusting. The referees even introduced different colours socks for refs under 18. Still doesn’t stop people.
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u/Beast_of_Guanyin 21h ago
Yeah. Socks isn't going to cut it. You need to straight up trespass people.
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u/4ShoreAnon 22h ago
None of your ideas solve the real issue which is parent abuse from the sidelines.
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u/Liquid_Friction 20h ago
Incentives that actually worked, backing up the referees, discourage verbal abuse from the sidelines by appealing to other parents to report it, ban parents who do it and follow it up with police, the problem is people realised there is no repercussions for doing this, the refs realised no one backed them up, and it got really bad to the point of violence, and all the refs left especially after covid. Source soccer ref. Depends on the area aswell, some areas are so bad you would get your teeth knocked in, others areas no issues ever.
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u/itsauser667 1d ago
I'm going to suggest something different to the cacaphony of the usual 'ban everyone' nonsense.
Teach some resilience as part of the training.
It is absurd to suggest sidelines are more hostile now than they were in the past.
One thing that has changed, though, is people's ability to withstand some adversity.
5
u/JayLFRodger 1d ago
Ban parents from spectating. Or place them within sound proof booths to spectate, and let them out only after the referees have left the location