WE have put a lot of energy into recruiting referees young and old, and the stats make for encouraging reading.
The number of referees we lose every year is around the 4,500 mark. This is due to a number of reasons.
Family or work commitments, ages, illness or other circumstances. It’s not a worrying figure, it’s to be expected.
However, the number of new ones we take on every season now stands at 6,000 – so that’s a profit, so to speak, of around 1,500 each year.
Our view, and this is backed by facts, is that if we keep a referee in his or her first y...