As has now become customary, I am delighted to provide you with an update on London's progress over the last few months since our 2024 Conference and 20 months into my tenure as President. Firstly, I wish to extend my and the Management Committee's thanks to all of you for engaging with the Society so much, either by covering a huge number of games, as referees or Match Observers, assisting in delivering our YMO programs, Training & Development, mentoring and generally giving back to the Society. Without all of this participation, the Society we all know and love would not exist and its success is all down to its members, so thank you.
As usual, I will break down the key's areas of focus and how we are doing in each to give you all transparency and allow you to consider other ways we can improve or areas we can focus on for the 2nd half of the season.
Recruitment & Retention:
Total games appointed (Aug-Dec 2024) = 3,602
Number of Individual Referees Appointed = 372
Number of Individual Match Observers Appointed = 35
Referee's who have officiated 5+ games = 66% (of 372)
MO's who have officiated 5+ games = 80% (of 35)
YMO appointed games = 105
New Referees appointed to one game or more = 39
New joiners to the Society = 40 (including 5 from other Society's and 10 YMO's)
6 TUTW Courses delivered to 100 attendees
MODC:
Robbie has already communicated the mid-year re-grading announcement, so congratulations to all our members who worked so hard and have been recognised with a well-deserved elevation in grade! However, we are always conscious that other members may be reaching the end of their on-field life, but wish to stay involved in the game. While we do our best to promote other avenues available to our members to keep involved, we are conscious this might not be done via clearly signposted pathways, so I am delighted to announce that the SW region, in conjunction with MODC, will be initiating a pilot program to formalise the pathways and courses available to referees looking beyond the whistle to continue their career as coaches, observers and ARs and to embrace and harness their knowledge and years of valuable experience. We thank those members in the SW who are getting involved in this pilot and will report back to the Society how it goes and how we intend to roll it out to the wider Society in due course.
Our MOs, under the watchful eye of Mark Plummer and Ken Morgan, conducted 315 formal observations between August and December alongside another 20 'colleague observations' from referees watching their peers. If you are willing and able to conduct 'colleague observations' between now and May, please reach out to your Regional Appointer and let them know! Once again, I wish to place on record my thanks for all the hard work done by our MO community. They put in many hours both watching games and completing their reports, so it is very important to acknowledge this incredibly important resource because without them, our referees would not be able to improve. I was delighted to attend the MO Conference at London Bridge a few weeks ago and watched many MOs share insights and best practice so they can deliver invaluable feedback to our referees. Many thanks to Mark, Ken, Simon, Jeff and Bob who ran the sessions so well!
Lastly, while MODC are still in the early stages of planning for the 2025/26 season Annual Conference, we would ask that you note Sunday 31st August 2025 in your diary, as the likely date for it.
Notable London Society Promotions:
Harry Parsons - Promotion to NLMOT
Nick Edmonds - Promotion to SEMOT
Chris Howe - Promotion to SEMOT
Jamie Parr - Debut as Championship referee
Calum Howard - Debut as Premiership AR
Overseas Exchanges:
Edinburgh - Cyril Brognard and Ben Stone (report here)
Sweden - James Richardson & Ben Linale
Dubai - Josh Methven, Simon Waite, Yueli Ang, Ben Stewart, Robbie Bourke & Andrew MacNeaney (report here)
France - Ollie Carter and Graham Wiseman as MO (report here)
Hong Kong - Selection currently taking place
London hosted referees from France, Sweden and Scotland in November and all had a fantastic time and performed extremely well in their games. Many thanks to Pedro, Calum, Seb and all the MOs and referees from the North region for making it such a success.
Unfortunately, all our Ireland and Wales exchange discussions have come to zero due to financial constraints within those Referee Societies, but we will continue to keep lines of communication open with them in case anything changes.
We are still exploring exchanges with Paris, Switzerland and Spain and hope to also have something with the U.S. this season
Thanks again to Rich Gordon and Pedro Diogo for all their work on the International Exchange program and to Eric Hewitt for all his handwork on our domestic Exchange program which is extremely successful and rewarding for all who participate.
RFU SGM Motion:
As many of you will have read in the press over the past few weeks, the RFRU have requested the RFU hold an SGM relating to the incentive program of the Senior Management of the RFU. The Society's Gen Sec, Peter Coulthard, sent a message out about this on last week and please do reach out to him with any questions.
Sponsorship:
Andy Evans, in his role as Commercial Officer for the Society, continues to engage companies who we feel may be suitable sponsors of the Society. While I understand the frustration of members at the time this is taking (we are now 2 seasons without a sponsor), I would point out that the cost of rebranding the on-field kit of our active referee cohort amounts to about £45K. This is an amount of money the Management Committee will not dip into reserves for, but is not an inconsiderable sum of money when budgets across most firms we have engaged with have been tightened, so it is taking longer to sell the value proposition of a Referee Society to potential sponsors. I would therefore ask all our members to think about contacts within their working environment to see if they may be willing to engage with the us. With over 7,000 league & Cup games covered each season (plus another 2,000 fixtures via the NSS, B'mouth and Summer Social), our on-field exposure amounts to about 9,000 games across 250 Clubs and Schools in the Southeast which is very attractive to the right firm!
Please reach out to Andy Evans with any suggestions you may have; andynjevans@hotmail.co.uk
Social Media Team:
As you will all have noted, our Social media team have done a fantastic job of elevating the Society's presence to our members and the wider Referee community via posts on Facebook, Instagram and the Society website. If you have anything you want to highlight or if you wish to join them and help with the weekly posts, please reach out via the contacts below:
Manager - David Gallagher
Jamie Parr
Yueli Ang
Emma Abbate
Dan Maynard
email: media@londonrugby.com
Annual Dinner:
For the 160+ of our members in attendance, it was a great Annual Dinner on Nov 14th 2024 and we were able to honour Society stalwarts Bob Ockenden and Gary Marchant with the inaugural John Raywood and Wayne Barnes OBE awards respectively. I'm delighted to provide a link to photos from the night here, and ask members to look out for the date of this year's dinner which will be announced in the next few months.
Regional End of Season Dinners:
Southeast - Wednesday, April 9th 2025
Southwest - Friday, April 25th 2025
West - Friday, May 9th 2025
North - TBC
That rounds out the areas of focus for this mid-season report card, but as usual there are lots more going on in each region, so look out for updates from your Regional Managers, please make an effort to attend your monthly regional meetings and don't hesitate to reach out with thoughts on how we can continue to improve the way the Society works for you, our members.
Yours in Rugby,
Andrew MacNeaney
President L.S.R.F.U.R.