Andrew is already the Community Development Officer for Rugby Ontario - looking after the development of Flag Rugby, particularly in schools.   For the months of June, July and August, he will be working more or less full-time as Referee Development Officer.  For the rest of the year, he will have to give Flag Rugby priority but he will still have some time for his RDO duties.

One of his prime tasks will be to be follow on the work done in 2008 by RDOs Sean McDonaugh and Gareth Jones, namely, the development of young referees in the 16 to 20 age range.  These referees will be trained initially to handle matches in the Under 10 to Under 16 range and then progress to more senior club matches. He will also work with Branch Society Development Officers to improve the services offered to Society members.

He has set himself some impressive targets for 2009, namely:

• Establish an academy for referees in the 16 to 24 age group
• Develop specific programmes to take age grade referees up to just below Panel level.
• Develop a programme to reduce costs to young referees by refunding course fees after reffing a certain number of matches
• Indentify sources of videographers and train them to video referees in action
• Develop technology e.g Skype, to improve and coordinate Branch training programmes

Andrew arrived on the Ontario scene in mid-2008.  He is a New Zealand trained referee who has quickly progressed to the Focus Group of the National Panel.  He has just bought a house in Burlington where he lives with his Canadian wife and youngster.

He can be contacted at flagrugby@osrc.com

We invite all Ontario referees to support his work.  Together we can make a difference.