I hope that most of you know me by now. I passed my Referee Exam back in 1998 after a decent playing career in the wonderful game. As a Referee I reached level 3 Contributory Leagues. I took up the role of UHLSPORT Hellenic League Referees Officer in 2012. Saturdays is always football day and I am grateful to the UHL for helping me get to achieve my goal to get to level 3. So when the post became available I jumped at it.

So what do I do ??

My job starts as the season finishes. As a league officer we have to get ready for the following season. We start the process of retaining and recruiting new Referees. This year we lost 35 officials due to various promotion and retirements.

The league needs on average 60 Officials every Saturday, 20 referees and 40 assistants, from a list of approximately 120 match official’s.

- I appoint Assistant Referees to Premier and Division One games.

- I also appoint Match Officials to our Division Two League matches.

- We appoint officials to The UHLSPORT Hellenic Veterans League in midweek

- Additionally for Oxford Utd, Oxford City and Wycombe Wanderers College games in Midweek, and on Saturday Morning.

This totals over 3000 appointments every season.

So it is vital we have the correct number of suitable officials to do the job.

The appointing process begins in late June with appointments to pre-season Hellenic club friendlies and we are also requested by our local higher level league clubs These offer amongst other, our newly promoted officials the opportunity of experience of clubs at higher levels as well as the pace and standard for the League season to come.

The UHL organise fitness tests in June and July for Level 5 to 7 Match Officials who want to be considered for the higher level matches within the UHL. These are held at three venues across our region. Once the season starts we have to ensure that we have sufficient match officials available each week to allocate to UHL matches. There are many matches that take precedence over UHL games. Amongst these are FA Cup, Vase, and Trophy plus the various county cups (Senior, Intermediate, Junior and Charity). Outside of our control Match Officials can be appointed to any of these games. This can be as late as at 48 hours before Kick-Off. Additionally Match Officials have the same issues as players with injuries, and last minute work commitments for example.

All of this means RE-APPOINTMENTS. Nobody likes doing things twice but unfortunately its part of the Referees Officers job. Over 500 reappointments were made last year.

The job is very satisfying as I get to work will the up and coming referees of the future and it is always a pleasure seeing some old faces return. The referees I work with are all fully committed to providing the best possible performances they can. The standard of officials who go forward from the UHLSPORT Hellenic League is second to none and of that the UHL is extremely proud.

Paul Redmond

Referees Officer (2012- Present )