Dear Referees,
As we head towards the end of August, a seemingly never ending 2024/2025 season draws to a close and the 2025/2026 season begins, with pre season friendlies well underway. As we transition seasons, on behalf of the Match Official Development Committee, I wanted to extend our ongoing gratitude to you, our refereeing and support community, who continue to give your time and energy to our game across all regions in London. 2024/2025 was a great season, with an amazing 5,436 fixtures appointed by the society, and over 460 referees active across the season. This is a brilliant effort from all, and clearly confirms our position as the largest rugby union referee society in the world.
On the pitch, we had a season of great performances and development. One way of recognising this development is through our promotions process, which is committee led at regional level (up to and including level 7) and centrally (for level 6a and 6).
It is with great pleasure that I can confirm the following referees have achieved promotions following the 2024/2025 season:
North: Tom Bamford, Richard Carroll, Andrew Gardiner, Luke Hammond, Luke Havers, Michael Knowlson, Ben Linale, Nicholas Rey, Heather Saville, Alex Sylvester, Gerard Taylor, Jack Trevella
South- East: Emma Abbate, Richard Castle, Carl Classen, Liam Collins, Tom Davies, Fortunio De Villiers, Mat Flint, Nick Freds, Josh Jones, Dan Maynard, Chris Ovenden, James Reilly, Tom Roberts, Ray Tierney, Paul Timmins, Harrison Whitehouse
South-West: Richard Blanford, Chris Butler, Ollie Carter, Douglas Clarence, Richard Collis, Horia Cretu, Ben Davey, Neil Driscoll, Michael D’urso, David East, Billy Eggleton, Jim Emmines, Alick Foreseter, Isaac Forknal, Steve Foxton, Peter Francis, Lee Gardner, Natalie Gregory, Chris Hambleton, Nicholas Harper, Harry Hawkeswood, Annie Hopper, Josh Jones, Philip Manzini, Simon Marshall, Sean McAndrew, Darrell McLennan Fordyce, Tony Montague, Lily O’Hara, Corbin Parsons, Ross Parsons, John Payton, Alex Peggie, Rob Randall, Edward Reed, Phil Richards, Tarek Sherazee, Ben Smalley, Ross Stander, JJ Steel, Ben Stewart, Dominic Straker, Ardan Suphi, Pablo Villanueva, Tobias Whiney, Neil Whittington, Molly Williams
West: Ben Allanson, George Beckley, Livia Branga, Cyril Brognard, Matthew Calabria, Marc Fusil , Tom Gorton-Clark, Huw Griffiths, Harry Hopkins, Dean Human, Matthew Isherwood, Richard Jones, Jordon Lowndes, Gavin Nicols, Ben Stone, James Trust, Adam Young, Tim Wort
As we transition to the 2025/2026 season, we are really looking forward to welcoming 200 people to the Annual Conference at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham on this Sunday 31st August. We are now at capacity for the event which continues to grow in popularity year on year. We are delighted to welcome Wayne Barnes as the guest speaker together with a number of our National League Match Official Team members as presenters on the day. If you don’t have a ticket but want to be added to the waitlist, please email me at robbie.bourke@londonrugby.com. Equally, if you have bought a ticket and can no longer attend, please email me so tickets can be redistributed. A further email will be coming out about the final details for Sunday shortly.
For those that are still hoping to post a Bronco time, you will be glad to hear that Ross Hanbury is running the LAST bronco session on Monday 8th September at St Benedict’s School starting at 6:30pm (Address: St Benedict’s School, Perivale Lane, Perivale, Greenford, UB6 8TL). Please contact Ross at rosshanbury@gmail.com for more information.
I look forward to seeing some 200 of you on Sunday at Twickenham. For everyone else, I wish you the best of luck for the start of the season. Please reach out for any help required or with any questions and I hope to connect with you soon.
Thanks again for all you do for the game.
Kind regards,
Robbie Bourke
Chair of the Match Official Development Committee (MODC)