Mini Soccer

The Crowborough League doesn’t allocate referees to mini soccer teams, instead the responsibility for organising match day officials, in this case just a referee, is down to the home team manager. Usually this will be an assistant coach or a willing parent. In general though, especially bearing in mind the games are non-competitive, then any willing individual who understands the rules of football is fine.

U11 Upwards

Once you move to 9 a side football, a qualified referee is used where possible as you’re dealing with offside decisions and a larger, more complex scale of game. Whatever league you are involved with will have a referees secretary, whose job it is to assign referees to all fixtures. There are often not enough referees to go around however and so a willing parent or coach may still be used if the league cannot provide one.

The county FA provide lists of referees for you to contact in the event of needing a ref. Many will be assigned already, but you are welcome to try any names on the list and see if you can find someone.

Running the Line

From under 11 upwards, two people will run the line. Each team provides one person to do this, who runs the line for their team, deciding if the opposition players are offside or not and which way to award throw-ins are the two most obvious duties of someone doing this. The resources simply aren’t out there for the leagues to provide qualified assistant referees, so using a willing parent or assistant coach is the best option.