T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion ref­er­ees de­part­ment has a new home where lo­cal ref­er­ees will un­der­go train­ing of the high­est lev­el un­der the guid­ance of for­mer FI­FA ref­er­ee Ramesh Ramd­han.On Tues­day, the FI­FA Ref­er­ees As­sis­tant Pro­gramme (RAP) course was com­plet­ed at the Plaza De Mon­trose hall where 30 lo­cal elite ref­er­ees and five lo­cal in­struc­tors reg­is­tered with the TTFA, re­ceived train­ing from FI­FA ref­er­ees in­struc­tor Pe­ter Pren­der­gast.The pro­gramme has two key el­e­ments–pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing ref­er­ee ad­min­is­tra­tion at na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tion lev­els and fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of elite ref­er­ees in the world with uni­fied stan­dards and train­ing.

The course last week was con­duct­ed to up­date ref­er­ees on some of the lat­est de­vel­op­ments and train­ing meth­ods in ref­er­ee­ing as FI­FA al­so pre­pares its of­fi­cials for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.And with Ramd­han now at the helm of the TTFA Ref­er­ee's de­part­ment, a new train­ing cen­tre has been es­tab­lished at the Plaza De Mon­trose in Ch­agua­nas where class­es are held on Tues­days and prac­ti­cal ses­sions on Sat­ur­days at the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas ground. The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) has been a sup­port­er of the ref­er­ee's de­part­ment while SPORTT as­sist­ed with the stag­ing of the RAP course.

"The train­ing we un­der­took in re­cent months com­pli­ments this course. There was a Fu­turo III course in Ja­maica a cou­ple weeks ago where a new method­ol­o­gy was in­tro­duced with the aim of en­hanc­ing the prepa­ra­tion of ref­er­ees at the high­est lev­el and this was passed on to the lo­cal ref­er­ees dur­ing the RAP course," Ramd­han stat­ed.Present at Tues­day's clos­ing at Plaza De Mon­trose was al­so TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, TTFA ref­er­ees com­mit­tee chair­man Bri­an Layne, FI­FA ref­er­ees in­struc­tor Pren­der­gast and Sportt rep­re­sen­ta­tive Clyde George.