How Wales is nurturing the next generation of referees

AS WE see with top players in rugby, great ones come and go and retire, while others get to a certain level but don't quite make it to the top or don't have the opportunity. It's the same with referees.

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What we have in Wales is quite a lot of younger referees coming through now and if you look across the world it's a much younger generation of officials than we saw years ago.

In recent years referees of my age have retired and therefore you don't have the same level of experience any more. What we are seeing now is an academy structure, the same as we have with players.

What's really important is that the balance is achieved by giving young referees the opportunity while still making sure that if your best referees are your older ones they are still appointed to the matches that require the best.

Young referees will do a course and when they start officiating games they are watched to help them improve and learn and also to see if they have the talent to go on further. If they do, they go into an academy, that's how the system works.

The referees involved in the upcoming autumn internationals will all have come through an academy system at the WRU which was set up by Bob Yeman and myself many years ago.

In these academies the young referees will be taught different aspects of the game and they'll get some coaching from a former referee like myself and Ian Davies, who now heads up the academy as the elite referee manager.