In early January I flew to Cork with the Swedish U18 as the development referee taking part in the training camp and tour. We arrived in Cork around 3 am on Monday morning after a 13 hour flight and hopped straight into bed to rest before an 8 am breakfast followed by a morning training. We were hosted by CBC and were allowed to use their pitches for training, which is where we headed Monday morning. During trainings I was involved when the team did match orientated drills and exercises, and when they weren’t doing that I stayed active, watched how the team were coached to play in different situations to learn how to referee those situations better. For example, the team was partly coached by a former London Irish flanker. He gave the team several tips in both lineout and ruck situations, which viewed from a referees point of view gave me new views on what to look for and how to referee situations that can occur.
In addition to being included in the team trainings I was also assistant referee for the two games that they played whilst I was there (against CBC and the Munster Academy). A relatively new ref, who has only been active for 2 seasons, refereed the first game. He has been tipped as the new referee to keep your eyes on internationally. There was a lot to learn from him but also it was interesting to see that an up and coming ref, with lots of coaching opportunities (including being invited to ref Munster’s A-Team at their trainings) was of a similar refereeing standard to our own Swedish referees. In the second game I was AR to John Lacey, a Heineken Cup referee who has also reffed the Junior World Cup. I was involved in all aspects of the pre-game, game and post-game and all of these proved to be a learning experience and also gave me the opportunity to make new contacts within the Irish referee community. After this I flew back to Sweden on Thursday after a very intensive, informative and fun few days in Ireland.
It must also be mentioned that the Irish guys showed us (adult) visitors from Sweden the very best of their town and Irish hospitality, and it’s definitely worth a trip there!