THE Ba Rugby Referees Association hold their AGM this morning with the aim of adopting their first-ever Constitution. If all goes well, they will then vote in the new Committee Members.
“This is an important day for the Ba Match Officials,” BRU Secretary Gaby Kautoga said. “They have been a bit in limbo for the past 12 months, and hopefully the AGM and the new Constitution will allow them to move forward with confidence in the knowledge that they are complying with their governing bodies’ requirements.”
Until now, the BRRA has been loosely formed without a guiding document or formal bylaws.
“The Fiji Rugby Union has made it clear that every provincial member union, like Ba, must have a referees’ association,” Kautoga said. “That is part of the Terms of Participation for Ba to play in the Skipper Cup and Marama Championship.”
“The BRRA has always been there and we have worked closely with them for the last few years as Ba Rugby itself has grown; but now the emphasis is on compliance, so we need to formalize many of the administration areas so that everything is clear and transparent.”
In BRU’s Constitution, all member clubs should have a referee and a trained medic.
“That isn’t always the case,” Kautoga admitted. “We have encouraged clubs to put forward a referee, some do, some don’t, and the numbers go up and down.”
“We have 40 clubs, so there should be at least 40 match officials with BRRA; but the actual number is around 22. That needs to improve.”
Kautoga added that the BRU is looking at ways to ensure the registered clubs comply with the regulations and supply one match official, possibly to include incentives or penalties as encouragement.
“In the past, new match officials have started to come to the weekly training sessions but have left after a few weeks, maybe out of disinterest, maybe because they weren’t getting selected or maybe some other reason, we don’t know.”
Last year, the BRU and BRRA agreed on an improved fee structure which gave the match officials around $1,500 per Saturday for the club games.
It’s an area where BRU really wants to see proper development, and is now looking at creating two places in the Rugby Programme at Ba Methodist for match officials.
“That was a very good suggestion from Talema Waqa of the Fiji Rugby Union when he visited the facilities last week,” Talatala said. “That would be good for the future, but for now we just need our clubs to take this seriously and follow the regulations.”
The BRRA AGM will be held this morning at 11am at Ba Methodist High School. For enquiries, clubs or match officials should call interim chair Kolaia Caucau on 963 7393.
