Wirral RA First Meeting of 2012
06/01/12 22:22
Dear Colleagues
Happy New Year!!!
Thursday 12th January 2012 will see the first Wirral RA meeting of the new year. Dave Welch will be delivering the new Mentoring course in conjunction with the usual RA meeting so please save the date and show your support for Dave, Rob Johnson and John Davies as they try and enhance the development of our colleagues with the new Mentoring initiative. In addition there is plenty to bring you up to speed on with various bits ‘n’ bobs of correspondence and consultations. The meeting will start at 7.45pm prompt at the Cammell Lairds Sports and Social Club.
Trevor Massey sent an email before Christmas inviting you to attend a seminar on Monday 16th January 2012 at the County HQ. Cheshire RA will be hosting Mark Clattenberg as their guest speaker which I am sure will be an entertaining evening. If you would like to attend, you need to contact Trevor directly to reserve a place.
The following Monday sees the Level 4 Promotion seminar. For those of us that have applied for promotion to level 4, this is a ‘must attend’. Again, you must confirm your place directly with Trevor Massey.
For those of us refereeing in the West Cheshire leagues, there is an ongoing consultation regarding the use of 3G pitches. I would propose if you let me have your views to submit a formal response from Wirral RA rather than Joe being flooded with emails, any views!? I propose to do the same and canvass some opinions at our next meeting with regards to referee’s training.
I have attached the RA December digest, latest Highlights magazine and various other pieces of bed time reading for you. In particular, a copy of the Eccles RA Informer bulletin. A lot of work goes into producing these publications and our sincere thanks is offered to Stephen Welch at Eccles RA for making this available to us, it is an interesting read for referees at all levels of the game.
Membership forms are available on the website and I will bring some to the next meeting! http://www.merseyside.net/wirralrefereessociety/
Finally as always, if you have any queries or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Fingers crossed the weather improves in the next few days and we can get some games on this weekend!
Best wishes
Dave
(Wirral RA Secretary)
Happy New Year!!!
Thursday 12th January 2012 will see the first Wirral RA meeting of the new year. Dave Welch will be delivering the new Mentoring course in conjunction with the usual RA meeting so please save the date and show your support for Dave, Rob Johnson and John Davies as they try and enhance the development of our colleagues with the new Mentoring initiative. In addition there is plenty to bring you up to speed on with various bits ‘n’ bobs of correspondence and consultations. The meeting will start at 7.45pm prompt at the Cammell Lairds Sports and Social Club.
Trevor Massey sent an email before Christmas inviting you to attend a seminar on Monday 16th January 2012 at the County HQ. Cheshire RA will be hosting Mark Clattenberg as their guest speaker which I am sure will be an entertaining evening. If you would like to attend, you need to contact Trevor directly to reserve a place.
The following Monday sees the Level 4 Promotion seminar. For those of us that have applied for promotion to level 4, this is a ‘must attend’. Again, you must confirm your place directly with Trevor Massey.
For those of us refereeing in the West Cheshire leagues, there is an ongoing consultation regarding the use of 3G pitches. I would propose if you let me have your views to submit a formal response from Wirral RA rather than Joe being flooded with emails, any views!? I propose to do the same and canvass some opinions at our next meeting with regards to referee’s training.
I have attached the RA December digest, latest Highlights magazine and various other pieces of bed time reading for you. In particular, a copy of the Eccles RA Informer bulletin. A lot of work goes into producing these publications and our sincere thanks is offered to Stephen Welch at Eccles RA for making this available to us, it is an interesting read for referees at all levels of the game.
Membership forms are available on the website and I will bring some to the next meeting! http://www.merseyside.net/wirralrefereessociety/
Finally as always, if you have any queries or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Fingers crossed the weather improves in the next few days and we can get some games on this weekend!
Best wishes
Dave
(Wirral RA Secretary)
Comments
An Important Message From Jack Blakemore
06/01/12 22:17
Wirral RA President Jack Blakemore has asked for the following to be sent to all officials and to the Wirral based leagues.
Please can you all read it and act upon it. Read our section on Pitch Inspections for further guidance.
Hello Fellow Referee
Message from Jack Blakemore, President of Wirral Referees’ Association:
Whatever views you might hold about the general all-round standard of the Council-owned football pitches these days, it is still our duty as referees to exhibit a degree of common-sense when deciding whether a pitch is really fit for play on the day.
Wirral Council’s Neil Irons is the man responsible for the final say towards the end of a week if it is considered that a forecast of the week-end weather conditions is likely to make the playing of a game a source of further damage to a pitch.
I have spoken today (Thursday 5th January)with Neil and he is very keen to see games go ahead this week-end, AS LONG AS REFEREES SHOW THE COMMON-SENSE APPROACH EXPECTED OF THEM towards preserving the state of a pitch by accepting it is unplayable rather than ruining it by playing a game.
Neil is in a most difficult position this particular week-end but wishes to co-operate as much as possible with all the leagues that utilise his pitches. The problem is, some pitches at Plymyard and some at Arrowe Park specifically, are indeed fit for play but others at these two venues are certainly not as things stand at the moment. The difficult pitches at Plymyard are those on the same side as the dressing rooms.
Neil commendably says it would be uncharitably wrong of him to say all games on Council pitches are off this week-end and so he is prepared to give the go-ahead as long as we referees adhere to the request not to play on certain-numbered pitches.
A small minority of referees has given the vast majority of us a bad name in the recent past for totally ruining a pitch by playing a game when a more caring, streetwise match official would not have done so. The immediate thought amongst those more protective referees, is that the others play the game merely to collect their fee. I will lay my own personal head on the line and say this is certainly a true statement.
We all love refereeing (otherwise we should not be doing it) so please lads, show some respect this week-end (and, indeed at all other times) by only giving your game the go-ahead if the playing surface dictates.
The Council, like some of us I’m sure, is cash-strapped and the days are long gone whereby money could be thrown at re-levelling and sanding a pitch that has been cut to ribbons by a selfish referee.
We owe it to one another to be sensible in this respect. For those of you who would like more guidance in the area of pitch inspections, dive into the Wirral Referees’ website (just put ‘Wirral Referees’ into your Search Engine) and click on the link to the left entitled ‘pitch inspections’.
Best Wishes
Jack Blakemore
Please can you all read it and act upon it. Read our section on Pitch Inspections for further guidance.
Hello Fellow Referee
Message from Jack Blakemore, President of Wirral Referees’ Association:
Whatever views you might hold about the general all-round standard of the Council-owned football pitches these days, it is still our duty as referees to exhibit a degree of common-sense when deciding whether a pitch is really fit for play on the day.
Wirral Council’s Neil Irons is the man responsible for the final say towards the end of a week if it is considered that a forecast of the week-end weather conditions is likely to make the playing of a game a source of further damage to a pitch.
I have spoken today (Thursday 5th January)with Neil and he is very keen to see games go ahead this week-end, AS LONG AS REFEREES SHOW THE COMMON-SENSE APPROACH EXPECTED OF THEM towards preserving the state of a pitch by accepting it is unplayable rather than ruining it by playing a game.
Neil is in a most difficult position this particular week-end but wishes to co-operate as much as possible with all the leagues that utilise his pitches. The problem is, some pitches at Plymyard and some at Arrowe Park specifically, are indeed fit for play but others at these two venues are certainly not as things stand at the moment. The difficult pitches at Plymyard are those on the same side as the dressing rooms.
Neil commendably says it would be uncharitably wrong of him to say all games on Council pitches are off this week-end and so he is prepared to give the go-ahead as long as we referees adhere to the request not to play on certain-numbered pitches.
A small minority of referees has given the vast majority of us a bad name in the recent past for totally ruining a pitch by playing a game when a more caring, streetwise match official would not have done so. The immediate thought amongst those more protective referees, is that the others play the game merely to collect their fee. I will lay my own personal head on the line and say this is certainly a true statement.
We all love refereeing (otherwise we should not be doing it) so please lads, show some respect this week-end (and, indeed at all other times) by only giving your game the go-ahead if the playing surface dictates.
The Council, like some of us I’m sure, is cash-strapped and the days are long gone whereby money could be thrown at re-levelling and sanding a pitch that has been cut to ribbons by a selfish referee.
We owe it to one another to be sensible in this respect. For those of you who would like more guidance in the area of pitch inspections, dive into the Wirral Referees’ website (just put ‘Wirral Referees’ into your Search Engine) and click on the link to the left entitled ‘pitch inspections’.
Best Wishes
Jack Blakemore