My name is Amit, and I lead on young referee representation at the Berks & Bucks FA Youth Network (BBFA YN). My role exists to ensure that all young referees in the county have the opportunity to have their opinions heard, and to provide a youth voice to the referee team at the Berks & Bucks FA (BBFA).

In the Berks & Bucks area, we have well over a thousand young referees operating, and so far during the 23/24 season, we have trained almost six hundred of them. With such a large and growing young referee workforce, we felt that it was more important than ever for us to provide a space where these young people can tell us what we are doing well, and what we can do even better to support them. Hence, we decided to create the Young Referees Network (YRN). 

One of the purposes of the YRN is to act as a feeder into the BBFA YN and provide us with feedback so that we can make more informed decisions as to what projects we should run. Another key purpose of the YRN is to give young referees an opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals, meaning that they can network and gain invaluable insight from others who have been in similar positions to them. The final key aim is to increase engagement with young referees and give something back to them for all the hard work that they do. 

I think that one of the best things about the YRN is how diverse the sessions are – there are no “typical” meetings! It will often be quite topical with us presenting projects that we are looking to work on, and the young referees bringing forward their own thoughts about the various topics. There are also sessions where we will purely have a guest speaker come along and talk to us about their experiences in football. For example, in the March meeting, we were lucky enough to be joined by select group 1 official Graham Scott. As one of the most experienced match officials operating at the highest level of football, Graham provided us with a lot of great information and really showed the young referees that there is nothing stopping them from getting to the top too. 

Following on from our first couple of sessions, we have engaged with over twenty-five young people, and have gained some very valuable feedback as to what they need more from us. The responses from participants have also been very positive, with our numbers growing every session. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s very clear to us that this is something that every County FA should be looking to implement. Young referees make up such a large proportion of the match official workforce across the country, and there is no one better to tell us what support young referees need than young referees themselves!

So, if you’re reading this and thinking you’d like to be involved with something similar to the YRN, speak to your County FA’s Youth Council, and if it’s not already a thing, make it a thing!