Tue, 30 Nov, -0001
Amman: Having a separate budget, an online referees registration system and a young referee talent programme are some of the items on the refereeing administration improvement agenda of the Jordan Football Association showing that refereeing administration in the West Asian nation is going in the right direction.
A meeting was held between the Jordan FA and representatives from the AFC MAs Pilot Project on Refereeing Administration Development on Thursday in Amman.
Jordan FA’s Director of Referees Salem Mughef, Deputy Director of Referees Awni Hassouneh, MA Referees Development Officer Rami Jaber and Assistant for Competitions Operations Latiff Abdel Majeed attended the meeting.
The AFC representatives were Head of Operations Section Abdul Razak Anuar and Shuichiro Hara.
In his meeting opening address, Mughef said: “On behalf of Jordan Football Association, Chairman of the Referees Committee and the General Secretary, I’d like to welcome both AFC delegates to Jordan and express our appreciation for the AFC’s assistance to help us improve our refereeing administration.”
The JFA then presented on the structure of their Referees Committee, Referees Department and the Regional Committee, where the line of reporting and channel of communications among the committee members and staff have been made in line with the recommendations by the AFC.
Nevertheless, there are still a few minor changes yet to be made on the structures and the JFA will execute these according to the recommendations by the AFC.
On the appointments of match officials in the JFA top league, the JFA have appointed two members from the Referees Committee together with the Director and Deputy Director of the Referees Department to review and appoint the match officials. The final list approved by the Committee will then be sent to the Competitions Department.
On the grand design of the Referees Development Strategy, the JFA have drafted a tentative plan and will submit this to the new management for their approval for implementation.
The budget assigned for Referees Development at the moment is still combined with that of the Competitions Department especially on the allowance for match officials.
To improve this, the Referees Department produced a budget of 2013 and 2014, the latter of which recommends that future budget be separated.
For example, referees’ equipment such as beep flags, communication sets, travel and match allowances should be under the Competitions Department’s budget, while referees development expenses such as that for the bi-weekly match analyses, two annual camps, MA and regional courses, etc, should be under the Referees Department’s budget.
As the matter is still under discussion by the management, the Referees Department will wait for further direction from the new General Secretary.
Referees online registration, similar to the players online registration, is still under process and will be implemented once the Finance Department has finalised the budget for this. For now, the JFA will provide the current list of registered referees, prepared manually, to AFC for record purposes.
For the Young Talent Programme, which aims to ensure continuous delivery of top-class referees, the JFA presented a policy and procedures document that specified the targets.
In the proposed programme, outstanding referees will be promoted to the top referees’ categories within a year and will attend their annual Referees Camp. The highly talented referees will be given an opportunity to officiate in Jordan’s top league, the Al Manaseer Jordanian Pro League.
The department will also review the documents on the referees’ performance for promotion and will submit these to the AFC soon.
The Referees Department is also waiting for the new design of the JFA Laws of the Game in Arabic.
As the Pro League has support from a local television company and all the matches are shown live on television, this gives them an opportunity to develop their own referee teaching materials for their fortnightly top league referees analysis workshops and match clips that can be used for their regional and basic refereeing courses.
Mughef and his staff thanked the AFC for the encouragement and assistance and will implement the recommendations proposed by the AFC and stated that as the JFA has a new General Secretary, the Department will give their feedback on the new direction of the management in due course.
“Refereeing development in Jordan is definitely moving on the right track and the AFC commends the JFA’s efforts to enhance their refereeing administration,” said AFC representative Anuar.
Jordan, along with Oman, Jordan and Myanmar, were selected for the AFC MAs Pilot Project on Refereeing Administration Development.
The AFC will assist the four MAs for a total period of two years under the programme.