The IFF Referee Committee launched a referee development group three years ago and the purpose for the group was to find referees and educate them. The goal is to have the referees promoted to the IFF ordinary referee group.

There have been several referees in the group during the time it has existed. The main objective has been to help referees from those member associations, which don’t have that much experience of referee education and coaching of the referees.

The development group referees were refereeing in the Czech Open 2013 for the third time. There were three IFF referee observers in the tournament to educate and coach five referee pairs from five different countries. The referees are:

Tamás Majorosi – Tibor Kiss / Hungary
Srdjan Stevanovic – Predrag Veljovic / Serbia
Roman Sklenica – Marek Vlasek / Slovakia
Ales Krzic – Davor Matijasevic / Slovenia
Alejandro De SatiEsteban – Nelio Mendoca / Spain

- It’s really good that the IFF RC has found this way to co-operate with the organisers of the Czech Open. We really appreciate their efforts to help out the developing referees from the smaller IFF member associations and I would also like to thank the organizers for this opportunity once again, says Mr. Radek Hora, an IFF RC member, who is in charge of the development group.

- We have been able to educate many referees in the development group and we’ve been able to promote some ten new referee couples to the IFF ordinary referee group this way. We’ve had also other tournaments for our education purposes, but this without any doubts, is the biggest tournament for the development group referees, he continued.

The IFF observers in the tournament educate and observe the referees and after that the IFF RC will in co-operation with the referees and their association create a career plan for the referees. Most of them will eventually end up to be official IFF referees in the near future.

More information of the IFF referee development group can be asked from Mr. Veli Halonen from the IFF office.