Whanganui rugby referee Jacob Booth (left) was selected for the Hurricanes regional squad of referees that aims to provide a pathway for grassroots referees.
Whanganui rugby referee Jacob Booth (left) was selected for the Hurricanes regional squad of referees that aims to provide a pathway for grassroots referees.
Whanganui rugby referee and pilot Jacob Booth has been selected as part of the New Zealand Rugby Regional Squad Programme for referees.
Booth joins 14 other referees selected for the Hurricanes Regional Squad and is the only Whanganui-based referee.
The programme aims to create a unified pathway for developing match officials across New Zealand. All five Super Rugby regions are represented with referees.
Chief flying instructor and head of training at New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy in Whanganui by day, Booth has only recently moved to the area with his fiancee and 8-month-old son.
Despite making the squad last year while refereeing in Manawatū, Booth was grateful to be selected again.
“It’s nice to be in the fold, to help out and be involved in a group of people to share my experience and take on other people’s experiences,” Booth said.
“I’ve done a couple of games up here so far but it has been good.”
Booth had been working for the pilot academy for seven years before making the move and had previous experience refereeing in Whanganui.
“It’s nice to ref in Whanganui, one of my good mates is the referee lead over here so I came up quite a bit with representative rugby when they needed help,” he said.
“He was trying very hard to move me into refereeing here and it just so turned out my partner and I ended up moving up anyway.”
Booth (left standing) has had experience refereeing in Whanganui despite being based in Manawatū for the last 13 years.
Booth grew up in Feilding, attending Feilding Intermediate School and Palmerston North Boys’ High School.
He became a rugby referee in 2011, aged 12.
“I got injured playing under-12s and by the time I tried to go back to playing, all my mates were way bigger than me and thought, ‘yeah, nah stuff this’,” Booth said.
“I lost interest, to be honest, so I started refereeing instead.”
The 26-year-old reffed in Manawatū for the past 13 years before his move to Whanganui.
Booth thought the recent introduction of regional squads of referees was a positive step for emerging referees.
“It is nice to see this new squad be made available since last year in terms of getting more involvement with the higher level referees - you can learn a lot off guys that have been there, done that,” Booth said.
“NZ Rugby identified that there was a little bit of a lack of pathway to bring referees up, I think the idea is to get people involved and create a pathway to mix top referees with emerging guys like myself and have conversations.”
Booth said the region had three one-day camps a season to discuss the system, rule changes and tips.
Booth said in 2011 that reffing an international game was one of his goals; that goal was still alive and he was excited to see how far he could get.
“There is a new framework that has been brought out by NZ Rugby with how they rate referees so that gives us a bit more clarity with what they are looking at. Hopefully that helps with progressing and we’ll see what comes my way - I’ll keep trying.”
