Rugby Africa holding online workshops to develop referees

Referees and coaches of match officials drawn from across Africa are following a series of online workshops run by Alain Rolland, High-Performance 15s  match official manager for World Rugby.

This initiative will help develop match officials in the key focus areas of the game, and the program will run for over two months.

With 42 participants (including 11 women), the English-speaking group, comprised of Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia & Zimbabwe, kicked off on May 19.

The French-speaking group, with 35 participants (including eight women) from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Senegal & Tunisia, began its first session on May 21.

According to Mudiwa Mundawarara, Rugby Africa referee manager, the novel coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions that it has brought, has meant that Rugby Africa have had to resort to the use of technology.

“This will very much be the case going forward and will enable us to take such development initiatives more widely than just to the Rugby Africa Panel,” said Mundawarara.

“Noteworthy has been our insistence on the inclusion of women for these workshops.

“The numbers are still low, but this is a start. We hope to address this through development initiatives aimed specifically at women match officials.”

Each group will hold seven one-hour sessions of, every two weeks. Rolland engages with the audience online via the Zoom platform by presenting videos on various phases of the game.

In partnership with ANA and Sports Leo