President of the Barbados Football Association Randy Harris wants to see more regional referees officiating in major tournaments especially World Cup and CONCACAF tournaments.
Harris comments came during the FIFA Regional Referees Instructors Course (FUTURO III) which was attended by FIFA Regional Referees’ Instructor, Peter Prendergast, at Blue Horizon Hotel on Saturday.
“Sometimes I am very disappointed when I see World Cup games, big CONCACAF games and I don’t see someone [referee] from Antigua, St Lucia, Barbados,” Harris explained.
He added: “I know it is a difficult task and while we have the two main ingredients here in the physical and technical area of football we all know there are other areas that we have to work with patience. Could you imagine if a surgeon makes a mistake? Then I do not see why there should be any difference in refereeing. All of us are working assiduously to make sure that our teams have higher rankings, perform better, and make it to all the cups. A lot of us are not thinking about the referees and we can’t have any gap between the development of the players and the game in the Caribbean and the standard of referring. So I want you to take this aspect of your training seriously.”
There are 30 participants with 17 technical and 13 fitness instructors from 13 countries and Prendergast encouraged the participants to share their knowledge and help those referees in their own member associations to get to the top level.
(From left) FIFA regional referees instructor Peter Prendergast and BFA president Randy Harris share a light moment during the opening ceremony.
“All that we do here is for the development of referees and our member associations and with this development, you are a very active ingredient in its success. This course is designed for you. But it is not designed for you to keep the information to yourselves, it is designed for you to go back into your member associations and prepare your referees especially for regional and FIFA competitions. The main objective is to get your referees to the top level so they would represent your own member associations, represent CONCACAF in World Cup football and this is both male and female,” Prendergast said.
In order to reduce errors in decision-making the focus this year would be on technology training, while at the same time focusing on the area of communication and therefore a new regional management system will be put in place.
“We will be introducing technology in training, instant feedback, recording what is done and replayed on the spot and the use of still photographs and video recordings in an effort to improve training.
“The Caribbean will be divided into three groups with a technical and fitness instructor at the helm and each member association’s referee development officer will submit monthly reports to those individuals,” Prendergast explained.
Among those participating are Bermuda, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Island, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Cacaos, Trinidad and Tobago.
The regional course facilitates instructors specifically from the technical and fitness side of football as it relates to refereeing. The course will conclude this Thursday.