Andrew Rowland, previously chair of Rugby Southland Referees joins me to talk about two initiatives they are running in the furthest south peninsula of New Zealand.

Firstly their Referees of the Future Scholarship initiative - a new way of attracting young (and not so young....) people into refereeing. We look at what's behind it, what's the 'offer' and how it's going so far. There's some more info here on their 2026 scholarship awardees.

And then Andrew and I talked about their Chaplaincy offer for their match officials in the province. We talk about what it is, what it's not, and how it's helped him and his fellow referees. If the word chaplaincy sends you down a certain thought route (as it did for me), then worth listening to what it actually is.

For more about refereeing in Southland, head here.

If you have any comments about this episode, or suggestions for future shows, then drop me a line at ref@rugbyreferee.net!

You can follow us here:

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Or you can connect with Keith personally on Twitter or LinkedIn

Welcome to Advantage over the podcast for the rugby referee community or

simply those in rugby who want to know more about refereeing.

Your host today is Keith Lewis.

Are you ready?

Time on

so joining me on the podcast today is Andrew Rowland from Rugby Southland

down in New Zealand.

We'll have a chat about what that means before

but until recently Andrew was chair of Rugby Southland Referees.

But he has just handed the reins over to a new chair down there.

But in his time as chair he kind of led and grew the referee organization down there.

And one of the many initiatives that he oversaw is one that I saw not that long ago

and wanted to delve into and that's about the thorny issue or the troublesome issue around

the world of how do we attract and recruit new referees.

So they've done some great stuff down there.

So we'll have a chat with that.

So thanks for joining us, Andrew.

Thanks for the opportunity, Keith.

Much appreciated.

Cool. So you guys call it your referee of the future scholarship program and

it's all about attracting and retraining match officials and especially or initially

targeting young match officials.

That's what I want to get into.

But obviously most listeners to the to the Advantage over podcast are probably up north

or elsewhere.

So let's just paint the scene of where you are

and the geography and the rugby landscape of Southland.

So where are we speaking to today?

Okay, so we are probably.

I'd almost hesitate to say that we are

probably the southernmost rugby playing province in the world.

So right at the bottom of the south island of New Zealand and our province,

it's actually reasonably sparse.

Gee,

probably.

I'm probably an hour and a, probably an hour

and a half one way trip to our furthest point and that you could probably draw a circle

around the province and, and that's about where you'd.

Where we'd travel to.

Poss. Yeah, that.

That would probably be a cover it.

The big cities down there.

Invercargill.

No,

no, no. Invercargill is, is the city.

Lots of little rural towns.

So the likes of Gore, Tiana, Winton, you know these names probably don't mean anything but

these are, you know, towns of, you know they could, there could be 10000 in them.

So we have a, we have a, a blend of metro rugby.

Our premier division is made up of predominantly.

Well this.

There's six teams and four of them would be

regarded as metro.

There's probably,

there's one that sits a wee bit in between and then there's definitely a country team.

The majority of our division One and two would be country based.

So. Yeah, country footy.

Yeah, so that's.

So yeah, we have Premier.

We have Premier men's and then Senior woman's and then we have those other two divisions and

then we get into our.

We have president's grade and then we get into our age groups.

So down to.

Yeah.

And the number of clubs that you facilitate would be.

Oh, good question.

I think there's something like clubs in

southland.

There's probably 30 odd.

Yeah. I guess scale into the referee society side as well.

So what's the, what's the, the refereeing approach?

Yeah. So not, not all of those clubs feature in every grade and you know,

there are, there are pockets of.

Pockets of clubs like you'll have the likes of

Gore or Eastern Southland which is, you know, probably a,

almost a subset of.

Of Southland geographically.

And there'll be sort of 12 clubs within that, within that quite condensed radius.

And then for us it's about making sure that we're putting.

That we're putting the best referee that is suited and qualified on, on those games.

And sometimes that means that games whilst there are referees refereeing and grades

below.

The reason why they're referring in those grades is because they're not quite.

It's not the right game for them and we don't want to set people up to fail just to have a

referee on the ground to keep everybody else happy.

That was basically where we got to.

And so Rugby south and referees is.

What's your membership level look like?

It's been reasonably steady over the last two or three years.

Just a moment, I got a couple of figures here.

So.

Yeah, so 2025,

2025 we had 56 referees of.

Sorry.

Actually we had 59, 60, 63 referees.

Sorry, four of which were females and 57 which were males.

And then 2026 we have 61 referees.

55 are male and six are female.

And you also run an associate referee program as well?

With what we might, some people up

here might call them club referees, I guess.

Yeah,

sounds like it.

Those numbers are included in our.

In those numbers that I gave you before.

But if I go back to 2025,

we had 49 fully registered referees and 14 associates this year.

Thus far we have 51 fully registered referees and two associate referees.

We have just recently run a series of associate referee courses.

So I would hope that that number increases.

And those,

those associate referees tend to operate more in the age grade, the lower age grade space.

And that's only just kicked off for us.

They had grading day Just sad day, just been

so.

Yeah,

we'll see.

Watch this space.

So that's, that's, that's kind of sets out this, this, the scale.

And like every referee association around the world, we're kind of always thinking about

where the new talent's coming from and how we get to jump ship into refereeing or to look at

refereeing as a route in.

Tell us a little bit about the thought process that sat behind the scholarship program.

Yeah,

absolutely, Keith.

So I guess during my tenure as chairman,

we always do our post season review and we were finding that our numbers were relatively

stable,

yet there were new competitions coming online, which was putting extra pressure.

We were having to shift some competitions or ask for competitions to be shifted from the

traditional Saturday time slots to,

you know,

Thursday nights, Friday nights,

things like that, to help us be able to service these games.

Our recruitment had probably been a little bit hit and miss in the past.

We were just sort of relying upon word of mouth,

you know, tap on the shoulder, that sort of thing.

So,

you know, as we were talking before, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing

over and over again and hoping for a different outcome, which we were probably guilty of.

So yeah, we, we decided to try and do something a little bit different.

And we'd seen a couple of different iterations that New Zealand rugby had, had tried with

some success.

Some of the listeners might have heard of Glenn Jackson, who's currently the Fijian Drua

coach, but he had a quite a decorated playing career both here in New Zealand and,

and over in the uk.

And then when he finished there, he pretty

much,

I think he hung up his playing jersey one year and what might have even been one Saturday

whistle the next Saturday.

Yeah, he did.

And, and within very, very short time,

you know, he was refereeing test rugby and, and doing it very well.

So we sort of thought, looked at that and they're doing it in the female space as well,

as we discussed before, Keith.

So we thought, well,

you know, what have we got to lose?

Rather have tried something and failed than not to have tried at all.

We were also very fortunate that we got a,

we had a funder or a sponsor come on board.

And just through the conversation,

the result was that they actually were prepared to do some funding for us and they

wanted it tagged specifically for recruitment rather than, you know, just going into the

general coffers.

So that was, that was probably the catalyst for, for us to get really serious about these,

these conversations.

And yeah, the, the result.

We're also very lucky that down here we've got

another community group that has run sort of scholarship programs in the sporting space

for, for an extended period of time both playing and coaching.

And I was lucky enough to go through that.

So I sort of had a little bit of an insight as

to what these sorts of programs could offer.

And so I said, well,

literally, why don't we give this a crack? What have we got to lose?

So what is the offer? What are you offering to Interested?

Yeah, so,

yeah, so what we did, a lot of it was actually more about giving these young athletes, or

giving these athletes, not necessarily young,

the opportunity to go through a selection process because a lot of them haven't.

And so whether they were successful or not,

we hope that they would walk away from, from the process with something, you know,

something that would help them, whether it be in life or on the paddock.

We started off with a focus on young match officials.

But coming back to our geography, you know, a lot of down here in Southland, we export a lot

of our talent off to university and the odd one drifts back but for the majority and they,

you know, they spread their wings and they keep on going, which is really cool.

So we thought, well, okay, if we're investing in them, we probably want to get something

back.

So that was where we ended up sort of

splitting our, I suppose you could say splitting our votes.

And of our five recipients this year,

we've got two of them are secondary school age,

two of them are ex players and one is still a current player and university age and in the

female space.

So what these successful recipients receive is aside from a financial contribution which it's

encouraged that it is used for rugby purposes, whether that be a new pair of boots or a gym

membership or whatever it might be.

They also get additional tutelage and additional training and development sessions

over and above our weekly, you know, our normal weekly association ones.

And then that's with the likes of mental skills,

sports chaplaincy.

We've got a dietitian coming in,

we've got access,

they will have access to our local npc.

So our.

Sorry, our MPC coaches and training.

So that's our, our Southland Stags they will

get.

That's your competition, isn't it?

Really?

Yeah. Yep. That's our national competition team.

So they'll, they'll be able to go along and observe them training and you pick the brains

of, of coaches and bits and pieces.

So that's, that's pretty awesome.

They have one on one coaching and you know, there's an expectation for them that they're

Doing game plans and which you wouldn't necessarily expect a first year referee to be

doing game plans.

But you know, we've, we've selected these,

these said individuals for a reason because we think we can effectively fast track them, you

know,

and that they've shown, you know, the resilience that we're looking for.

So we can sort of,

yeah.

Test their middle a little bit earlier than what we normally would.

So yeah, and, and that's, that's pretty much what, what they get as a result of their

scholarship.

The scholarship is on a,

it's on a year by year basis for a maximum of three years.

So just, just if I just pick up on the financial side of things because so

many, many countries up, up here in England and most of the, the northern sides referees,

we don't get any,

we get expenses, but we don't get paid.

There's no match fees involved until you get

to the, the sort of national end of the game.

Is that the same there?

So is this, is this a different approach to kind of.

And do you think that changes things?

Yeah, good question.

We are the same.

It's funny because over my career I've always joked with people when they say, do you get

paid? It's like, no, I have to pay.

I have to pay a sub for the honor of getting abused every weekend.

So it's interesting because a lot of the sports down here, whether it be basketball,

touch,

netball,

the teams actually pay.

Yeah.

Match officials,

whether it's 10 bucks a game or whatever it is,

both teams contribute.

Rugby is one of very few that don't get paid at club level.

Yes, we get expenses, we get mileage,

but that's all we get.

Yeah, we, we felt we wanted to make this,

you know, we wanted this to, to almost be a little bit elitism.

Yeah. So we wanted people to want to be in that.

You're asking someone that's come through old school,

you know, for me,

no amount of money would change whether I do or don't referee.

I do it for the love of it.

And I would suggest that probably for the

majority of our association that that answer would be exactly the same.

I haven't.

In fact, we had one of our, one of our scholarship recipients, he goes, I don't want

the money.

Yeah.

So that was,

I did some, that, that is interesting.

I did some study job.

We're not talking about big money, we're

talking about 500 New Zealand, 500 bucks

a year a season.

Just to save you reading for your calculated listener.

It's about 200 sterling,

300 US or 400 Australian dollars.

So like it's, it's a decent pair of boots a

couple of times a year.

As you say membership, a gym membership.

So it's,

it's not, it's not a semi professional contract or anything?

No, definitely not, no.

So that's, that's a really interesting approach.

So how's that going? Is it this is the first time you've run that

or is this.

This is the first time we've run it.

We had 12 applicants and the qualifying criteria is you had to be either.

You could only have refereed a maximum of one year.

So two of our recipients are effectively second year referees.

And yeah, aside from that, it was just.

They went through quite a rigorous, there was

quite a process where they had to submit an application.

You know, we looked through the applications, we selected a short list, then they had to go

through and they went before an interview panel.

There was three of us on that interview panel.

So there was the chairman of the board, which

was myself,

there was our appointments officer and then there was our referee manager or.

Yeah, referee manager,

yeah.

So. And that was quite an intensive process.

Yeah, we didn't,

we didn't take any prisoners because that was, this is all part of the scholarship.

Like if scholarship is in our eyes, you are effectively the best of the best.

Yeah. So we need to make sure of that.

Yeah. So. And we,

yeah, we settled on, we didn't really.

Well, we had a number based on finances and

that number was clearly higher than 5.

But 5 is what we,

what we decided on because we certainly, we didn't want to just be handing them out to hit

a number.

We wanted these to be something special and we wanted people to aspire to that level.

So. And I think,

I think we've achieved that.

Can I ask just what about the other seven?

Do, do you think obviously that you had 12 applicants?

Five, five got them.

What of the other do.

Does that mean we lose seven people who are wanting to be the game or have they just.

They go through the normal society process?

They go through the normal association process.

Of those seven,

I would say four,

five of them have gone through the normal association process.

Rightly or wrongly,

if they didn't get the scholarship and didn't referee as a result,

did they want to referee in the first place?

So are they the type of person that we want or need?

Yeah, that's a good provocation, isn't it?

But it's an interesting debate.

People think, well, actually, are we therefore

have we lost two People that we could have had via a different route.

But as you said before, we've got to test these things out and, and see with those.

And if they want to, if those seven individuals want to referee, they'll still be

refereeing.

Yeah, that's right.

If they genuinely, if they had that genuine

desire, they would follow through with it regardless of whether they got a scholarship

or not.

So.

Yeah.

Have there been any other sort of challenges to the program?

It's still early days in it, I guess, but any, any challenges to share?

I don't think we've run into any just yet and I hope I'm not putting the

commentators curse on things.

I guess just scholarship programs in general.

I've seen sometimes some of these scholarship programs are harder to get out of than they

are to get into.

And that was something that I was really clear and strong on from the beginning that there

needs to be,

they need to be meeting the criteria, otherwise there needs to be exit points.

And I'm not saying they, yeah, they miss one meeting and, you know, you're gone.

But it needs to be mutually beneficial to everybody.

We're committing, not only financially but, you know, investing time in these, in these

individuals and we need to be getting some sort of, we need to be getting payoff and

reward for that.

And if we're not,

well, then, you know, there needs to be a mechanism by which that we can draw a line in

the sand and move on.

So touch wood.

Yeah, touch wood.

We haven't had those, haven't had to have any of those conversations yet.

And I'm confident with the individuals that we've selected that it's highly, highly

unlikely that we're going to have to,

hence the rigor of the initial selection process.

That's.

It sounds like a really interesting initiative.

So it's certainly one we'll keep an eye on.

So I'd like to check back in with you in maybe

a year or so and even speak to some of the individuals when they, when they get going.

Be good.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think of those.

Yeah. Of the five we've got,

so two of them were brand new referees and they,

one of those two has refereed his first senior women's game and I, I actually had the other

one running touch for me last weekend and he's not far away.

He's not far away from actually picking up the whistle and, and going solo.

So that's,

that's awesome.

Can I just pick you up on something we talked about?

You, you mentioned as part of your offering there was about the sports chaplaincy piece.

I've seen some, some stuff around that which looks really interesting.

Can you just give it.

What, what is it and what's the, what's the

thinking behind it?

How long have you got?

I'm about as passionate about, as I am about refereeing.

All right,

so,

so we have a, we have an organization here, it's called New Zealand Sports Chaplaincy.

And we're lucky enough that down here in Southland we have a husband and wife team and

one.

And the husband actually works for Rugby

Southland as a, as a paid employee.

And this was floated once again just before I stepped out of the chair and I thought it was

a fantastic idea.

We,

we all know that we are going to have times in our career where we think we've been stiffed

on selection or someone's,

you know, someone's had a crack at us from the sideline or a coach or whatever.

And as tough as we think we are, we're human beings at the end of the day.

And these things do, whether you want to admit it or not, they, they do, they do affect you.

And I found, I always found that if I spoke to other referees,

they would always agree with you.

Right.

Which is actually not always helpful.

Yeah,

Sometimes you need someone to say, I think you might be overreacting there or you're,

you're kind of missing the point.

You know, you're blaming this person, this person, this person.

You're blaming the game, all the rest of it.

Actually.

Is there something perhaps out of kilter in your personal life which has led you to react

in this way?

And I think the comfort of talking to somebody that has in no way shape or form got any

influence on your career or your pathway.

There's a safety in that.

You still get to someone who understands the rugby landscape but is not like, we all have

our reference, we all have our coaches and all the rest of it, but if I go to my coach and

say, oh,

you know, ****, I'm having a hard time at home or whatever, it might look like,

gee, yeah,

my coach might be 65 or 70 or whatever and I know what his response is going to be and it's

probably not a helpful one.

Right.

So,

yeah, so we've got this,

so we've got this lady who is,

is our sports chaplain and she comes along to our meetings and she simply just connects with

people there.

She doesn't, she might do a little two minute

spot up the front about various things.

The one she did recently was about,

you know, negative selft.

Talk and things like that.

So, you know, a lot of our T and D meetings are all about, you know, on field stuff.

But we don't necessarily, I don't think we spend enough time training our referees how to

actually look after themselves mentally.

We train them physically, but we don't train them mentally.

And we all know that if you're not in a good space when you step onto the paddock,

you're going to be in a worse space when you step off.

So.

So I think the word chaplaincy was the word that jumped out at me because my

dad's in the religious side of things.

He's a vicar, retired vicar.

And I saw the word chaplaincy, thought, is this a religious initiative?

But it sounds the way you've described it, it's a well being offer.

And those things aren't necessarily the same thing.

And I did have the same reservation as you, Keith.

I'm not of the religious persuasion and I'm like, oh,

what's this going to be about?

But I think for us,

the individual that we've got, and she makes it very, very clear that it's not about this.

Ironically,

I think I was probably the first one in our association to utilize the service.

I had a little,

a little mishap recently,

a small accident which could have gone, which could have been a much, much bigger accident.

And it led me to,

it led me to some thoughts that I wasn't overly happy with but to have someone to talk

to.

And she asked me some, really,

she asked me some,

some thought provoking questions, one of which I still can't answer,

which was around okay, if I'm, I'm coaching, I'm coaching referees and if they perhaps make

a mistake or something,

for me that's actually, I should, I do welcome that because it's a learning opportunity,

but yet I won't let myself make mistakes, I won't let myself have those learning

opportunities.

Goes why is that?

And I'm like,

oh,

I have no idea.

So just little things like that.

And I know there's been two or three others that have just sat down over a cup of coffee.

Like she'll just meet,

she'll meet any of our membership anywhere, anytime over a cup of coffee and just have a

bit of, a bit of a chat.

And yeah, there's a couple of, couple of

referees that I've seen that have,

I guess in the past tied their self worth to their refereeing performances and if it

doesn't go well, you kind of see them,

you know, they become a bit withdrawn and all the rest of it.

And I know they've been working with her and I, I can see the difference in them, you know,

100%.

I've had other unions,

other unions ring up and ask about it.

I just think,

look,

you know, like I do, that refereeing can be extremely, extremely stressful.

Yeah. And isolated.

And isolated.

You talked about driving an hour and

a half to after.

Again, that's a long time for you to be in the car on your own after a potential

incident,

potential issue, a thing,

and mulling over the state of your week and your life and all those things as well.

So you can come up with all sorts of weird and wacky scenarios in that

time,

you know, but to have somebody who's not indoctrinated in refereeing and can give you a

different perspective,

sometimes that's actually all you need is someone to give you a slightly different

perspective.

You know, we're lucky with Sarah that her personality is perfect.

It's perfect for this job.

It's perfect for our,

for our association.

And I think in wider terms,

we want people who are considering refereeing to know that we care about them, we care about

them as people before we care about them as referees.

So we look, you know, you want that warm, inviting environment and to be known as.

We look after our own.

You know,

we don't hang out to dry, we don't leave you to solve your own problems because invariably

on your journey you will have these moments.

And from an out, from an outsider looking in, that looks ****** scary.

I, I, I think that's brilliant.

I'm glad, I'm glad I asked you about that.

I think there's a strap line that I started to use on the rugby referee.net stuff that we are

rugby people who referee and that what you've just described is exactly that.

We want to make sure that we look after each other, we look after ourselves and we are

supported in whatever we do because we are rugby people and that's how rugby people

behave.

We just happen to do it with whistles in our hands rather than balls.

That's really great.

Absolutely. And I think people look at refereeing as a lonely sport, right,

because they only see you out there in the middle.

But we are,

we are one big final, we are one big family and families look after each other.

So it, to me, it goes hand in hand.

And you're not,

you're not alone.

You're not fighting this battle by yourself.

You have got so much support, so much love,

so much Araha around you that you know it's a cool place to be, it's a cool group to

be part of that is a perfect place to to end this conversation.

We've covered two really important sub subjects there and really grateful for your

time, Andrew.

It's great to see both those initiatives is

kicking off and hopefully you the listeners taken something out of both both sides of it.

So thanks for awesome.

No appreciate it mate.

And thanks once again for the opportunity

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