I started refereeing back in 1995; a long time ago now. I had seen in the local papers about the constant shortage of referees in the juveniles and thought, \u201cI can do that\u201d. I passed the exam and took my first game in the juveniles in Banchory; an under 15\u2019s game. I sent 3 off and cautioned 5. I got home and screamed but it did not put me off. The highlight of my first season had to be the referees conference in St Andrews. I travelled down there with Roddy Cobb and John Gover, with Sandy Roy as driver \u2013 and what a weekend that was! St Andrews was a chance to meet the top officials in Scotland and get their advice. (Also, quite an amount of alcohol was consumed by all.)<\/p>\n
Most of the time was spent refereeing in the juveniles which I thoroughly enjoyed. The highlight of my juvenile refereeing career was to referee the Under 15\u2019s President\u2019s cup final at Pittodrie stadium in 1996. I acted as assistant referee in the juniors many times and also as assistant in the Highland League a couple of times at Huntly and Keith. I acted as assistant at the AIFF several times and this was great experience for me. Sadly, the AIFF is no more.<\/p>\n
Refereeing then took a back seat due to work commitments and also due to a couple of back injuries, but it was never in my mind to let my membership of Aberdeen and District Referees slip and leave the association, as one day soon I will be back in the juveniles again.<\/p>\n
I must give thanks to Sandy Roy for his advice on several occasions, and I must also give thanks to my mentor when I started refereeing. Mr Eddie Norrie, I thank you.<\/p>\n
To achieve life membership of the association makes me feel proud and gives me a great sense of achievement. The association is a great thing to help all in refereeing in the Aberdeen and District (including Orkney and Shetland) area and I feel it is more of a refereeing family than a district association.<\/p>\n
I hope the association goes from strength to strength and achieves great things for its members.<\/p>\n
Craig Grant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I started refereeing back in 1995; a long time ago now. I had seen in the local papers about the constant shortage of referees in the juveniles and thought, \u201cI can do that\u201d. I passed the exam and took my first game in the juveniles in Banchory; an under 15\u2019s game. I sent 3 off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-bereavement","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1362,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aberdeenanddistrictreferees.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}