Bathurst Football Referees Association (BFRA) will host two referees training courses next month, to help encourage players to become involved in controlling matches.
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Held in conjunction with Football NSW, the two referee courses will be held at the Proctor Park clubhouse and is open to anyone interested in refereeing.
BFRA president Greg Auhl has emphasised that Bathurst football needs more senior referees.
"When I took over as president last year, one of the things I wanted to address was the shortage of senior referees," he said.
"I'd love to be in a position, where people like myself could go out and do field assessments with young referees and not necessarily do anything too strenuous but that's not always the case.
"The message I'd like to get out to clubs is that there is no use sitting back whinging that there is no referees, if you're not willing to have some of your members put up their hands to be referees."
Mr Auhl said refereeing is a great way to give back to the game.
"I was a coach for quite a few years before I took up refereeing and I decided to take it up after somebody asked what the law of the game was on a certain situation and I didn't know," he said.
"I thought, 'Maybe I'm better off doing the referee course and I can answer that question'."
A common situation some players see is a game having a referee and linesmen, while another next to it has none at all.
Mr Auhl explained that some of those linesman might not actually be ready yet to referee a game yet.
"When people see that, we've probably just run a course and we've got junior referees coming through. They're in the process of learning refereeing and player management," he said.
"We use junior games as training games, putting them in the centre of under 12s and give them feedback on how to improve and build capacity.
"Those who show capacity, we start running them on the lines of senior games. We probably give them a season and a half before we introduce them into the centre of senior games."
He did warn that it only takes one serious negative comment from a player or fan for a referee to never come back.
"Our committee puts a lot of work into our referees and we want to put them in a position where [comments like that] won't put them off too much," he said.
The first referee course will be held just before the Bathurst Cup on Friday, February 14, which will be run by Football NSW. Orange referees are invited to attend, with a referee academy in Sydney expected to help with the event.
On Friday, February 21, the second referee course will be held, a Level 4 referee course.
It will run form 4-9pm, with practical training and assessment to be completed on February 22-23, on the Proctor Park Challenge weekend.
The training program is aimed at those would like to be match officials officiating in junior and youth matches.
For more information on the courses, visit the Bathurst District Football Facebook page at @bathurstfootball or the referees website at bfra.net.au.