The Football Association have unveiled a new Referee Development Programme aimed at recruiting more than 8,000 new referees before 2012.
The programme will apply to new trainee referees from July 2011 and to those, which include a number of officials in Coventry & Warwickshire who have reached level four or five and are looking to progress further.
The aim is for aspiring referees to have a better level of support from Referee Coaches and also providing each referee greater access to the mentor and support resource that is vital to their development.
The FA’s Head of Refereeing Development, Ian Blanchard, said of the programme launch: “The aim of the programme ultimately is to ensure we have better, more qualified and well supported referees at the semi-professional level of the game and above.
"We wanted to provide our referees with a clear pathway and route into the semi-professional game and also ensure they had the support and resource from The FA, whilst giving them a start and end point dependent on the route they wanted to take.
"This will help us not only recruit more referees in the future but also just as importantly retain the huge number of referees we already have that are out there helping us maintain our game at grassroots level.”
Full details of the programme can be found by clicking on