Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Kuala Lumpur: Elite Women’s Referee Instructor Bentla D’Coth who obtained her instructor’s badge in July 2010 believes she has now got rid of the blues of retiring from refereeing after she finds a new love in teaching.
Within the first year of voluntary retirement, Bentla found that she missed working on the field quite a lot but now she thinks she has found great satisfaction in touching other women’s lives by empowering them to become great referees.
The Indian woman is now instructing a five-day Elite Women’s Referees’ Course in Kuala Lumpur, her first instructing job in an AFC course, and also her second after her very first teaching assignment, a Futuro III course in Nepal last year.
The course is one of the activities in the AFC Elite Education Seminar 2012, the biggest sports or football educational carnival organised annually for Asian football's creme de la creme.
“Within the first year of retirement, I missed refereeing very much. All this while, I’ve been running on the field but now I’m a behind-the-scene person,” she told the-afc.com.
“But I’ve found that teaching has its fun and important purpose too. I now have a hand in making our Elite Women’s Referees excel more and more. It’s so much fun to see your charges getting better and better before your own eyes.
“If you’re a referee, you get satisfaction from your job well done on the pitch, but if you’re an instructor, you get your oomph from a job well done by your many students.
“Regrets? No I have no regrets in making the switch. It’s one of the best decisions in my life.”