The achievement of Fiji’s rugby referees will be celebrated with an inaugural awards ceremony on Saturday, December 20 at the Vodafone Arena in Suva.
The Fiji Rugby Referees Awards will see 12 categories being put up for contention, including the best male and female referee of the year awards.
These were announced at a press conference at the office of the Fiji Rugby Union in Suva yesterday.
Fiji Rugby Referees Association chairman Talimo Waqa thanked the Fiji Rugby Union for giving the green light to hold the inaugural event.
Waqa described the referees association as a “close-knit family” of 23 associations around the country that prepared referees for rugby matches and expressed the hope of recruiting more referees through the awards.
“Right now, our numbers don’t even meet and therefore we continue to recruit new referees as we go,” Waqa said.
“And (with) these awards, we do believe that this awards (ceremony) will recruit more members so that we prepare them to be at the next level.”
He also thanked the Fiji Sports Council for accepting their proposal to be a major partner for the event, represented yesterday by its acting chief executive Gilbert Vakalalabure and operations manager Litia Senibulu.
Vakalalabure said the ceremony aligned with their interest to be part of sporting development and thanked the association for giving them an opportunity to be part of the event.
Meanwhile, the ceremony’s organising committee is extending a call to potential sponsors to come on board and join the programme.
The first corporate entity to lend their hand towards sponsoring the event was Movements International Fiji, present at the event with a team led by its director of finance and human resources, Latika Devi.
