Thank you so much for your submission! We appreciate how important this is to the IM football clubs. 

Unfortunately, this is something the team is unable to accommodate for right now due to insufficient funding. To hire an FA registered ref, we would need to pay them also. But we would have to do this for all football teams, and there are over 15 matches each week so this would end up being quite costly. Due to fairness, we would also have to allow other IM sports (rugby, netball, basketball, etc.) the opportunity to have registered refs which really isn't something we can do - sorry! AU teams may also have some push-back as AU clubs need to source their own refs for BUCS matches also, so based on principle they may wish for SUSU support in organising refs for their matches, given we did that for IM.

However, we do plan to better support IM clubs by introducing an IM grant round to cover necessary costs, but this is currently in the process of being developed so we are still yet to see how this will look. So whilst we don't have the budget to accommodate it at the moment, we will definitely look at whether it would be feasible in the future. Or if there is another alternative that you know about, please do get in touch at vpsports@susu.org. It would be great if we could improve ref training, particularly in rugby and football, so if anyone knows any viable courses, I would love to hear about these!

Happy Movember, 

Casie VP Sports