23 August 2018­–The SAFA National Referees course got underway on Thursday (23 August 2018) at the University of Johannesburg’s Athletic sporting grounds. The three-day course will run from 23 – 26 August 2018.

SAFA Senior Referees manager Tenda Masikhwa stated that the course will serve as a selection process of potential match officials who will be added to the national referees’ panel.

“This course is supposed to give us a few more match officials whom we are hoping to bring in our national panel,” Masikhwa said. “The National Appointments Committee needs at least 80 officials; and at the moment we are sitting at 61, meaning we are around 19 officials short.

“For this course, we have a combination of experienced and up-and-coming match officials who are from our youth development programme structures. Those who get to pass both the physical test and the implementation of the laws of the game will be roped into our national panel,” said Masikhwa.

Masikhwa said the officials will go through the rigorous fitness test first before going through their understanding of the game while they will focus on integrated training of practicals and on how to implement the laws of the game.

“This course will be two-fold; they will get to sit in class and learn the theoretical part of things then go out to be tested on what they had learned in class.”