(Another) Busy Week

The second day of the Basic Course for Referees passed relatively quietly and we had 26 new trainees (level 9) at the end of the course. I made my way home and was then swamped with presents and cards for my birthday, with a couple of my older children calling in to see me.

Monday night saw me working away on my reports from Saturday's game as well as celebrating my 6th wedding anniversary. The reports were relatively easy to write and it was a reasonably early night.

Tuesday was d-day for the committee of my local Sunday League. We've been using The FA's Full Time service to record fixtures, results and suspensions for 2 seasons now and we wanted to make more use of the other services. This includes recording match facts such as appearances and goals scored as well as the comprehensive fixtures scheduling service.

With all the known constraints, such as fields being used for cricket, loaded in, I ran the fixtures and showed them to the committee. They liked the system and decided to run with it on a permanent basis. So my role as Match Day Administrator has been expanded to include the management of fixtures. It's not too daunting and I've made some good progress already.

Wednesday saw me travel to the Horsfall Stadium to watch a fellow member of my local RA in action. It was an interesting game and the report took me some time to complete on Thursday as I sought out some strengths and development areas.

That brought me through to Friday where I decided to put my feet up, have a long cool drink and prepare myself for my assessing on Saturday. The whole crew are from my local RA and the referee is the person for whom I carried out my first Supply League assessment back in January. I'm looking forward to seeing how much progress he has made. It will be good to catch up with James P and Chris H as well.

I'm closing by wishing Andy Madley well. He's doing his first Premier League game today at The Emirates for the game between Arsenal and Blackpool. It's funny to think I was running the line for him just 16 months ago at the District FA Sunday Cup Final. Good luck matey!