The Grading Committee reviews all reports received from our Advisors team with two main aims, to identity referees with potential to move above their current grade and referee at the next level consistently, and to ensure that referees are competent at their current level in order to maintain our duty of care to referees and players. Dave’s attendance as an observer from the Appointments team means we are able to feed back to them specific requirements for individual referees which they try to arrange within the constraints of game availability. These availability constraints also apply to our Advisors team who work relentlessly throughout the season including midweek and Sundays.

At this Review I was pleased to welcome Ade Adeyemo as an observer from our Advisor team.

This season saw a significant increase in the number of games that changed caused by bad weather and club cry offs, inevitably this led to last minute changes to the advisor appointments and regrettably in some cases referees not being watched as planned. However at the April review we were still able to review 46 reports on 33 referees making a total of 175 reports for the season.

In no particular order I have pleasure in confirming that following referees have aspired to their next level: Andy Bilbrough, Chris Berwick, Nigel Cooke, Phil Everitt, Richard Hughes, Nigel Scott, Carl Richardson and Richard Swaffield.

We have for many years had continuingly significant representation on The Central Federation, Midland Group and the National Panel. I am therefore extremely pleased to inform you that James Clarke has been accepted as a candidate for the Central Federation Panel, congratulations James. Congratulation to Ralph Mitchel, his hard work, commitment and determination has born fruit; Ralph has been accepted to Midland Group. Luke Haskins and Andy Atwell have been retained on Midland Group.

Finally a thought for you to take into next season. The grading Committee discusses at length and recommend on the information at hand from reports, if those reports contain action recommendations that repeatedly appear then progression is unlikely. Referees must take ownership of their own reports and the information given and ‘ask’ for assistance in resolving those issues and not hope they go away next time or wait for help to come to them, help us to help you.

Alex Mckerlie
Chair of Grading