Welcome to the November meeting.

First of all a warm welcome to our visitors, Bill Foulkes and Bill Hudson, we hope you both have an enjoyable evening.

I did not attend the last meeting although looking at the minutes, note that a number of refereeing matters were discussed including recruitment and retention of referees. As the FA are currently running a new referees course, I feel that now is an appropriate time to comment and put my view forward. To start with lets look at the main problem, which is:
A high percentage of referees leave the within the first 12/24 months of taking the referees course.

Jeff, Mike and many others put in a lot of hard work arranging and running new referees courses, at which the society and other benefits of refereeing are pushed. Although following the course, if there are ten people on the course we are lucky to get one new member. Many of the referees are young referees and go into the Timperley & District junior league, receive an earful of abuse from some fat bloke on the line and think, "sod this" and that's the last we see of them. I am firmly in the opinion that to keep a referee, as a society and group of established referees we need to give more support. Once a referee has over come their first few games and decided this is for him we need to ensure there is a path ahead for the referee to follow and for someone to track the referees progress on that path. The idea certainly being to take the referee to the line of the Mid-Cheshire and to be able to go out with other referees. When I look at our members many people have joined the society after they have gone out on a game with an existing member, which is usually on the Mid-Cheshire. This is our route to keeping existing referees and gaining new members.

So, if you see a new referee on a pitch next to you, over the next few weeks offer them encouragement and offer some advice. Because without the support from other referees it makes it much harder.
Finally as I have only three weeks until next months magazine to gather information any articles will be gladly received. Thanks to Roy for his article which will appear next month.