How to book a Referee

Cost of referees

Each Kent Society referee costs £45 a fixture and the Society pays the referee directly for their travel expenses. A team of three costs £90 a fixture, please note referees are in short supply and therefore teams of three will only be supplied when requested and necessary and appropriate personnel are available. All expenses for advisors and coaches who are appointed to the fixture are covered by the Society. Invoices are sent monthly with a 21 day payment window.

As our referees are volunteers, the Society do not always have an abundance of available referees and some weeks we may not be able to supply to all requests. The Society will try to fulfil all 1^st team fixtures as priority.

Supplying your fixtures

All club league games at the start of the season are automatically supplied to Kent Referees by the league secretaries for loading onto the appointments system.

Before the season starts, we suggest that any known home friendlies, Kent & RFU Cup games and all Schools/University games that require a Society referee, must be entered on a fixture form in the correct format so that they can be loaded onto our appointments system. A fixture form can be downloaded from our downloads page.  Send your completed form to admin@kentrefs.co.uk by 1^st August of every year.

All fixture secretaries in our appointments system can log onto WTR with their email address to check we have your fixture and to check if a referee has been appointed. We will not notify you that we cannot supply a referee only when we have appointed one. Once the season has started all new or changes to fixtures should be sent to the appointments team at appointmentsteam@kentrefs.co.uk. It is important to advise of any changes to kick off times as the referee may not be available.

Our appointments system is not linked to GMS and therefore it is extremely important that you update the Society with any changes of fixture secretaries and treasurers. Failure to do so will mean that you do not receive notifications of when referees have been appointed. This will mean that the referee therefore won’t be confirmed by the club and the referee may be removed from the fixture.

Confirmation of fixtures

Once you have received your notification of a referee appointment to your game you must confirm the game with the referee and any other personnel e.g. advisor  also appointed to the game. This can be done by phone or email but please make sure that you have received a reply from all personnel appointed to the game to ensure that your confirmation has been received. Confirmation of the game must be done no later than 3 days before the fixture. Failure to confirm the game may mean that the referee is removed from the fixture.

Cancellation of fixtures

After confirming the game with the referee if your game is then cancelled you must contact all personnel appointed to the game about the cancellation. All cancellations must also be reported to the appointments team by email no later than the day before the fixture. All cancellations on the day will be charged. However, (In cases of icy weather conditions) where a pitch inspection is required on the morning of the game, 3 hours notice is required so that the referee can be informed before they begin their journey. On the day cancelations should be notified by phone followed by a confirmation email.

If your game is cancelled and you arrange another game you must inform the appointments team by email. Holding onto the referee is not acceptable. (This does not ensure that the best level referee available is appointed to all games and in some cases can be under qualified) This decision of keeping the referee on an alternative game or moving them to a more appropriate fixture is solely down to the Society Appointment Officers. This ensures that the best available referee is appointed to each fixture.

Please note that the referee is requested by the home side and therefore when the opposition is the cause of the late cancellation, we cannot invoice the late cancellation fee to the opposition