Guide for Junior Competition Referees

Thank you for refereeing in our Junior Competition. 💙❤️

A summary of things to remember:

Whistle and white shirt 👍

#1 rule for referees: Don’t forget your whistle!
Wear a white shirt whilst refereeing to avoid clashing with blue and red singlets.

No scoring for 7s and 9s, scoring for 11s and older only.
Prior to the game, ask an adult from the first team on the draw (i.e. Blue side) to act as scorer. Blue side is the team on the left of the score sheet.
When you award a try, ask them to confirm that they’ve recorded the try before restarting the game (e.g. wave and wave back).
They can keep tally anywhere on the sheet but we need the final scores written as numbers in the Final Score boxes.
❌ Unlike last year, you are not required to check names before the game.

Games are limited to 25 minutes so once you have lined up a scorer (if required), please get the teams into the playing middle so you can commence as soon as the siren sounds.
Get captains to do paper, scissors, rock to work out who has first tap.
If you have a ref buddy, split up the job so one of you is finding a scorer and other is getting teams onto the field.
Know where you’re going for each time slot. If you need to know where each field is, refer to our field maps.

A reminder about the modified rules for 7s and 9s. Most important is errors in possession count as a touch rather than a change in possession. See modified rules.

Particularly for 7s and 9s, make sure you are explaining clearly what you want them to do.

If we have two refs on a game, we want you both to be helping to control the game at all times.
You are both being paid so let’s make sure that the experience for games with two refs is better than those with a single ref.
If you are on the sideline, you are helping to keep players onside and rotating back into the middle when your buddy needs a break.
For 7s, and potentially 9s depending on skill level, we would like each ref to do one side only. One ref will be with the defending side, marking the 7m. The other ref will be with the attacking side, telling them what to do. We want you to control the games so the parents can eventually move back to the sideline to watch.