The 2013 Australian Referee Squad was announced this week with 17 leading referees from across Australia. One referee selected is Western Australian and Senior Development Officer at RugbyWA, Graham Cooper, who is making his debut in the squad.
The squad includes three referees with Super Rugby experience – Ian Smith, Steve Walsh and Andrew Lees – as well as television match officials and premier grade referees that will be developing their skills in the squad to take on Super Rugby and potentially International games in the future.
The group will meet as a full squad for the first time in January to discuss new law changes and prepare themselves for the upcoming club and Super Rugby seasons.
It is a great honour for the 23-year-old, who has been officiating rugby games since he was in high school and last year decided to give up playing and concentrate on refereeing.
“I’d been refereeing continuously since Year 9,” Cooper said. “At first it was just casually after school but after getting the opportunity to go to the U16 national championships last year I decided that it was probably a good pathway and a good opportunity to take so I hung up the boots and decided to give it a go.
“It’s really exciting, being my first year out of playing club rugby and getting a bit of [refereeing] experience at Premier Grade level in Perth and a couple of Sevens tournaments over East.
“This is just another stepping stone to referee football in the eastern states and hopefully another couple of Sevens tournaments next year.”
Cooper said the opportunity to work with the likes of Walsh, who has refereed two Super Rugby finals and countless International games during the year, would be invaluable to his development.
“I’m looking forward to being able to pick the brains of the more experienced refs on how best to go about things and tackle the hard situations, and being able to work with them at Super Rugby level and assistant refereeing on the sidelines will be really exciting.
“Definitely being a Super Rugby referee will take a lot of hard work and improvement from where I am now which is a big key but I can’t see anything better than refereeing a Super Rugby game or even an International.”
Alongside Walsh, Smith and Lees, Cooper said there would be three or four referees also pushing for their Super Rugby debut in 2013 while some will have the opportunity to referee IRB Sevens or run touch or assistant referee Super Rugby.
Cooper will continue to balance refereeing duties around his work in growing rugby in Western Australia and is making sure he is fully prepared for the commitment.
“I guess the biggest thing being in the Australian Referee Group is being able to train and educate ourselves to a level that the players are at,” Cooper said.
“Players put a lot of time and effort into playing and developing their own skills and referees have to do the same to keep up with them so I think that’s the biggest area that’s going to take most of the time; the training, being physically able to do the job as well as mentally do the job.
RugbyWA offers a range of courses and training sessions for referees at all levels to develop their skills. If you would like to get into refereeing, head to the RugbyWA website.