Following a recent staff restructure at the Leicestershire & Rutland County FA, we have conducted a period of consultation with various referees stakeholders and surveyed local referees to ensure we are best able to prioritise support to recruit, retain and develop referees moving forwards.  

We know referees value opportunities to network with their fellow officials, to share learning, challenges and experiences, but also want to have opportunities to have 1-2-1s with other experienced officials. Alongside this, we are as a County FA want to ensure referee feel supported with some essential processes, in particularly support at personal hearings and with DBS verifications. 

We have listened to all this feedback and are now excited to begin to communicate new ways in which referees can access this essential support as we move forwards. 

Welcome to the New Referee Support Team 

We have now recruited and inducted 6 diverse and experienced volunteer referees to make up a new “Referee Support Team”, who will be available to support referees in the following ways; 

1) Offer advise and guidance to referees when required 

2) Support referees at personal hearing 

3) Facilitate “Ref Talk”, our new weekly referee online call  

The 6 experienced officials that make up this new Referee Support Team are; Colin Green, Minesh Gupta, Charlotte Sparling, Ruebyn Ricardo, Mehul Karia, Olly Mackey.  

RefTalk starting Sunday 13th December, 6:30pm 

To support referees to network, share challenges and learn form others, our new Referee Support Team will be facilitating our new weekly referee online call, RefTalk. 

RefTalk will be conducted through Microsoft Teams, starting at 6:30pm every Sunday. All LRCFA registered referees are invited to attend to review weekend challenges and successes, discuss a question of law or any other referee matter, in a controlled yet open forum. 

The first ever RefTalk will introduce attendees to our new Referee Support Team, and seek feedback from registered referees on how this forum can best support referees moving forwards. 

All registered referees will receive the link to access this call via their private email address on Wednesday 9th December but if you have not received this link to access RefTalk please email Referees@LeicestershireFA.com (Note, you must be a registered referee with the LRCFA to receive an invite to this call) 

To find out more about how to access support from our new Referee Support Team, RefTalk or to learning about other essential support available included how we will support referees; after a serious incident, at a personal hearing, post-match advise and guidance and completing an FA DB, please download our new Referee Essential Support 2020-21 document here:

Referee Essential Support 2020-21 document