2019 All Age/Over 35s/pub league thread

[Thomas477]

Referee numbers are down in all age and over 35's football due to more referees being pushed into zone league football. With some zone league teams now playing Friday nights.

I suppose it's great for the zone league competitions and the referees themselves who make more cash doing zone league games. I suppose that's the advantage of teams playing zone league football. A real incentive to make the step up.

I’m sorry, but that’s not true. They’re not being “pushed” into the zone league. It’s just a lot of the refs would have been doing a/a & o/35s are wanting to push themselves and see how they go into zone league. It’s also happening with juniors, a lot of the first years who would start in juniors are bypassing that and going straight to northern’s 11/12s SAP and junior newfm/npl as opposed to doing their apprenticeship in the various junior comps. There has also been a big movement of referees from the junior branches to northern over the past few years, and a range of ability levels. What you also find is that a lot of these referees would be covering up to 9 games over a weekend with the junior branches, whereas now, due to various reasons, they’re not doing anything near that. The junior branches never really recovered from this loss.

[sammydog]

I’m sorry, but that’s not true. They’re not being “pushed” into the zone league. It’s just a lot of the refs would have been doing a/a & o/35s are wanting to push themselves and see how they go into zone league. It’s also happening with juniors, a lot of the first years who would start in juniors are bypassing that and going straight to northern’s 11/12s SAP and junior newfm/npl as opposed to doing their apprenticeship in the various junior comps. There has also been a big movement of referees from the junior branches to northern over the past few years, and a range of ability levels. What you also find is that a lot of these referees would be covering up to 9 games over a weekend with the junior branches, whereas now, due to various reasons, they’re not doing anything near that. The junior branches never really recovered from this loss.

You don't think the reason for the move is because they get paid more to officiate those games than they do with Juniors/AA/O35?