The Professional Referee Organization's new Training and Development Manager Paul Rejer has been a busy man since he retired from active refereeing in 2003, and he is now relishing the chance to play a major role in developing officials in America. After beginning his career in 1979, Rejer made it into the English Football League as a referee and also ran the line in UEFA Cup and FA Cup finals. Then, after his on-field days came to an end, Rejer took up a coaching role with Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) – the governing body that oversees officials in England. His role was initially on a part-time basis before it became a full-time role - which he held for nine years, before deciding the time was right for a new challenge. ... http://www.proreferees.com/news-article.php?item=1
It's been a busy few months for Michael Kennedy, as he settles into life as the Professional Referee Organization's new Referees Manager. The 51-year-old actively officiated in Major League Soccer up until last year, with his last match being a 1-1 draw between Portland Timbers and DC United on September 29th 2012. Since then, it's been all-go for the former FIFA referee and he believes the experience he has in MLS will benefit him in his new position within PRO. “Initially, the offer to work for PRO was quite a surprise,” Kennedy explained. “Thankfully, Peter [Walton] was flexible with my schedule and with the offer, so that I had time to contemplate it - that was good. I knew it was the tail-end of my career, so it worked out well. “I was refereeing on the Saturday in Portland and then Monday I was in New York with Peter and it's been all-go since. ... http://www.proreferees.com/news-article.php?item=2
andymoss, I've merged your two threads here and edited the posts a little. I realize there's no malice intended, and likely everyone knows where these articles came from, but site rules dictate no copy and pasting of entire articles from other sites. Copyright reasons and the like. If we don't enforce it here, it will be much harder to enforce in other cases where it might matter. So I've made this thread where links and portions of new PRO articles can be dumped and general discussion can be had. Hope it's not an issue.
As an aside, has anyone else noticed that the PRO article indexing is weird? The most recent article is always at the link news-article.php?item=1, which means that as soon as a new article is posted, the links for all previous articles will change. Not good if you want to keep a link to an article for long-term use.
As MassRef already said it is quite ironic how unprofessional the website is for an organization that has the word 'Professional' in its title.
It amazes me that you can dig a 15-month old thread to post this link, but didn't notice it was already posted last Thursday--the day it was published--in the active MLS thread: https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...d-discussion-rs.2000143/page-43#post-30012618 There can't be an expectation that everyone reads everything on this board. But if you're going to dump links that are more than 24 hours old (and go to some real effort to do it, as I have no idea how you found this thread), check in the obvious places first to make sure it's not already up. This is a pattern. You're not really participating in a discussion board if you're just posting links and not reading.
I was clicking around the pro website- the "how to become a referee" tab is a broken link to ussoccer. Irony.
Pro has been somewhat disappointing. Should just get rid of it. And just hire the psra to fix things up.
Could you be more vague? If you're going to make such a statement then back it up with some tangible reasons. Not that I disagree but your solution does not even make any sense either. I doubt PSRA has any interest in that. They are a registered labor union and likely would want no business in such matters.
Never understood why American unions are so handicapped from responsibilities. In European unions regular help train their members.
Who said anything about training? You suggested PSRA take over assignment from PRO, correct? Training and assignment are not the same thing. The training for PRO referees seems to be world class, so I'm not sure where you are going with that. I also asked you to elaborate about PRO and why you think they have been disappointing. Your statement is beyond vague and you still have not given any thoughtful reasons as to why you feel that way.
Can't hang that on PRO! US Soccer is redoing the web site (again) and moving things around. If you have links (my org does) to pieces of it, good luck, they keep moving things around.
Sorry for the vagueness, more seeing it as why do we need two different organization, couldn't the PSRA handle the responsibilities of both? http://www.premierleague.com/content/premierleague/en-gb/referees/about-pgmol.html
No. PSRA is an organization of referees established for the purpose of advocating for referees and entering into a collective barging agreement with professional leagues on the best terms possible for the referees. PRO is the other side of the table.