Last year, FFV referee Jonathan Barreiro travelled to England as part of an exchange program with the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) group who officiate all English Premier League matches. He refereed two matches in the Premier League U21 competition.
Two referees from PGMOL in England have now travelled to Victoria to referee matches in the NPL as part of the same program.
The PGMOL structure for the English Premier League and the Championship has changed recently and more referees are being given an opportunity at the professional level. The core ‘Select Group’ of 18 professional referees officiate the Premier League and this includes 33 year old referee Stuart Atwell from Warwickshire.
Atwell is no stranger in English football with refereeing always being a lifelong ambition. A career highlight came when after just one year in the Football League, he was promoted to the Premier League Select Group and the highest level of refereeing in English football in 2008. His debut at the age of 25 in a fixture between Blackburn Rovers and Hull City on 23 August 2008 made him the youngest ever Premier League referee at the age of 25. Atwell’s experience in the last few years has seem him alternate between the Premier League and the championship however he official makes his return to the Select Group in 2016.
Atwell will grace the pitch at Olympic Village this Sunday afternoon to officiate the fixture between Heidelberg United and Hume City.
In December last year the English PGMOL announced a ‘Select Group 2’ would be created introducing 12 full-time professional referees and six part-time to officiate in the Championship.
The appointments were announced in April this year in preparation for the upcoming 2016-17 Championship season. Peter Bankes was appointed into this group as a reflection on his almost 20 years as a referee, coach and mentor within the Liverpool County Football Association.
Bankes makes his appearance this weekend at Lakeside Stadium in the Sunday afternoon fixture between South Melbourne FC and Avondale FC.
Whilst the traditional face of the Hume City coaching team, Lou Acevski wont be seen this weekend, three other big coaching names in the NPL will take to the pitch alongside the visiting referees. George Katsakis, Chris Taylor Anthony Barbieri are all comfortable in providing constructive feedback to the referees during the match. It will be interesting to observe the difference in officiating standards the English referees bring to these matches and whether the friendly welcome they get from the coaches will come anything close to what they experience back home.
Reviewing some of the records of these referees over the last twelve months, the records paint a picture of the level of control they have over a match.
Atwell who will control the Heidelberg Hume match dished out 118 yellow cards in 44 matches last season at an average of 2.7 per match. There were multiple occasions when he didn’t have to put any players in the book and twice when there were six yellows, once in a League One and once in a League Two fixture. He only issued four record cards for the whole of the last season.
Bankes appears, on the statistics alone, to be a little more card happy than his colleague. He pulled out the yellow card 153 times in 38 matches at an average of 4.02. There were only two matches where he didn’t use the yellow and there were five instances of red card send offs. His highest card count for a single fixture was the Championship match between Birmingham and Reading in August last year when he went for the yellow card an astonishing nine times.
In a media statement from the FFV, Referees Manager Luke Brennan said it was a fantastic opportunity for Victorian referees, players and clubs to experience working alongside elite English referees.
“The partnership between FFA & PGMOL is a great opportunity for our FFV referees to develop their refereeing to a higher level,” Brennan said.
“Refereeing with Peter & Stuart will be an excellent opportunity for our referees to learn from their experience from an on field & off field perspective, both aspects are extremely beneficial to their development as referees.
“Only 12 months ago our referees were able to share an evening with Mark Clattenburg which was very successful. In the year since he has refereed the Final Euro 2016, UEFA Champions League Final & FA Cup Final, so the calibre of people our referees are being exposed to are at the highest level possible”.