Welcome to

Durham County Referees' Society

Founded in 1895

Fergus King MBE

It is with great regret that we inform you that Fergus King, a stalwart of Durham City RFC, Durham University and Durham County passed away this afternoon (29th July 2020).

Fergus had been ill for sometime and today he decided to hang up his boots for the last time. He will be sadly missed.

Society Training Meeting.

The Society held a trial training meeting using the zoom platform. The meeting had a few teething problems but fortunately it was relatively successful.

It is hoped that the training meetings using zoom will be rolled out to the body of the society in the near future.

The plan currently is to run meetings targeting smaller groups initially to build up experience in the use of Zoom and to assess the best content delivery method

Breaking down, the new Breakdown Law variations (NZ)

Many if not all rugby people will be aware that the professional game in New Zealand has started again. The Super Rugby Aotearoa tournament will run for 10 weeks and is being televised on Sky Sports. Whilst this is no doubt a great relief to those that have been missing there rugby and are lucky enough to have Sky Sports, it will surely have raised some questions amongst community referees.

Perhaps as a result of Covid-19 or perhaps it is just one of those things, there is a new emphasis on the breakdown and how it is to be refereed
“We’re not changing the laws of the game, we’re being stricter about how we referee them”. This is the summation from NZR national referee manager Bryce Lawrence, on how his team of referees will rule the existing laws at the breakdown. He stated they would be applied more strictly to create faster, attacking ball and, a fairer contest.

The question that is surely on the lips of most community referees is why have the laws not been applied correctly in the past! The follow up has to be, will other laws such as the put-in at the scrum also be subjected to “refereeing adjustments”

Annual General Meeting

As members will already know the AGM this year is being conducted in a virtual form by email.

The Official positions have all now been confirmed with a vote for the Committee referee representatives being carried out. The positions of the Directors were not challenged as so went through automatically.

The various reports have been sent out to members. Any questions, comments or challenges should be submitted to the Society Secretary by email before the 2nd July.

One thing that members will be please to see is that the Treasurer has made a number of concessions regarding subscriptions for the 2020-2021 season and also on kit for MO’s YMO’s and MOD’s. This is being achieved by using our reserves and not at the expense of clubs.

We cut back on our planned spending which meant that some monies we were due from County & RFRU were retained & thus able to be added to a pot for distribution to clubs. Clubs have been offered terms by the society to cover any match fees payments outstanding to easy financial pressures on them

RFU Webinars

RFU Webinar Programme details
Coaching & Referee Webinar - Tuesday 9th June – 7pm
It's here Scrum Week
Refereeing the Scrum with Wayne Barnes and Matthew Carley

updated June 4, 2020

World Rugby Considers Corona Virus Measures

World Rugby's executive committee will consider recommendations this week that could help significantly reduce the risk of coronavirus in the sport.

updated May 26, 2020

AGM – 2020

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, that meeting will no longer be held, but the AGM will be held using email so that we are ready for next season.

updated May 23, 2020

Minor Law Change

World Rugby has announced that, with immediate effect, it will no longer be possible to score a try by grounding the ball against the post protector

updated May 19, 2020

Grading List May 2020

Grading Committee met virtually on the 7th May to consider the end of 2019-2020 referee gradings. Thanks to the hard efforts of the small band of MOD's there was a total of 152 reports to consider including 29 from out of County exchanges