The Premier Boys’ School First XI competition is a gateway for young and talented players to represent their schools well at national tournaments and then push on to Mainland Premier League, National Youth League and beyond. To improve the professionalism of the competition and give future players a taste of three-point referee control, Mainland Football’s referee development team has turned to the schools to provide students an opportunity to become qualified assistant referees.

All thirteen schools participating in the competition supplied at least one student to be an assistant referee for a match each week. To qualify, students attended a Community Based Referee Course, with enhanced assistant referee elements including around signals, offside, ball out of play and other tasks an assistant referee would perform in a match.

In total, over 30 students have qualified from the programme. On match day, participants meet the referee, go through a team talk, warm-up, equipment checks of the teams and other general pre-match tasks. They then walk out with the referee, participate in the RESPECT handshake, and adjudicate on offside and ball in/out of play decisions.

The programme was facilitated thanks to all 13 schools, along with Matt Cortesi and Alan Walker. Mainland Football referee development assistant Cameron Gruschow, who co-ordinates the programme, believes it is a stepping stone to getting more young people involved in refereeing. “Having assistant referees from schools means that accuracy of decisions, such as offside/not offside are increased, compared with a referee officiating on their own”. Although new to the art, the assistant referees would be supported by Gruschow, local coaches, and the referees themselves on match days. It is hoped that more young students would take up refereeing themselves in the future