A media conference was held today by the SLRFU at the Colombo Swimming Club. They announced their new development strategy and the signing of the referee’s consultant Mr. Garratt Williamson from New Zealand.
Garratt has refereed over 100 first class matches, including 2 tests and close to 40 Super Rugby games. He has refereed the IRB Sevens Series and blew at the 2010 IRB Junior World Championships. After a comprehensive review of Sri Lankan refereeing in December 2014, Garratt has recommended a structure based on;
- Recruitment & Retention – targeting schoolboys and ex-players
- Learning & Development – changing from an assessment mindset to a coaching and referee development mindset.
- High Performance – Identifying, promoting and developing referees for the international stage.
· We have been to schools and spoken to boys about refereeing to stay involved in the game, develop management skills and leadership. We have recruited 4 ex-players into refereeing including an ex-national player.
· We have created four refereeing panels each with their own coach. This coach will be responsible for the development of the referees. These coaches will be headed up by Dilroy Fernando as the referee head coach.
· Our A Panel referees have already met and we have spoken about their development plan. It involves the key areas of tackle & scrum, as well as some development on position and communication.
· We are excited about the future of refereeing in Sri Lanka and believe that with some short term patience we will see some long term improvement in refereeing.
Also SLRFU has urged the Sri Lanka School Rugby Football Association to help them with finding students who can take on the management and leadership roles by refereeing. SLRFU will only provide referees to the Under 20 segment one with two assistant and a referee’s manager. Under 18 – 16 they will only provide one referee and the schools has to find two touch judges, ideally a member of 1st XV or a former player of the College or even a young talent who has the passion and some knowledge about the game where SLRFU will educate them along the process.
Moreover, Mr Chula Dharmadasa, President Referees Interim Committee stated, that the Referees union will conduct a ‘fair play’ schools rugby team in the ongoing season and to be awarded at the end of the season.
Mr. Asanga Senevirathna, president SLRFU also addressed the media saying that “it’s imperative and all the clubs and schools have to help us seriously in this process. For the last 10 years Sri Lanka has not produced a single referee, standard of rugby has been all time high we want to bring our referees to the same level. “I personally had to view some of the match DVD last six – seven weeks and the outcome is referee have gone according to the law but the players make the mistake and often the game is played just 20 minutes after all those stoppages. Mr. Senavirathne further stated that “referees issues has been not only in Sri Lanka but in Asia as there are only four referees has done the level 3 out of more than two million players, so there is also a demand for this role and we will contract the best referees to do their job professionally within two years with Garratt on board”.
Mr. Dharmadasa mentioned that bringing foreign referees is not the solution, we have created some best Asian referees like Dilroy Fernando and Nizam Jamaldeen. It is time to rebuild that era and the foreign referees were here for the Dialog Rugby League and they did make mistakes but not a single media or a club complained therefore, this mentality should be changed. Furthermore, he said that the new strategy is to continue and run with whoever replaces me or the SLRFU in the future and to continue and maximise the results to the vision of this strategy. Garratt adding to this, stated that on his observation since November that referees standards are pretty good but at times that the players, coaches and the public don’t know the modern rules.
However, from the new strategy SLRFU will find more numbers to involve in refereeing and also they will educate the players and coaches about the modern law whilst they improve the current referees with coaching and assessment basis activities where Dilroy Fernando will head that panel and
There are eight (8) A panel referees in Sri Lanka and a total of 72 as registered referees. A panel referee gets Rs.10, 000/- per match and Rs.7500/- & Rs.5000/- for B and C panel referees.
