As Polynesians, we aren't people who typically enjoy the spotlight, so it was great to see people of different Pacific Islander backgrounds recently put their hand up to become referees.
About 20 people participated in a referees course with an eye to the Queensland Pacific Island Cultural Carnival, where they will now get the opportunity to put their new skills into practice.
There's a lot of Polynesian, Maori and Indigenous players in the game but not many of us proportionally in the officiating circle, so this is the perfect place to start.
I come from a Maori and Cook Islands background and I can tell you Polynesians are a very shy people, so going on the field to be in the limelight as a referee is not something we usually would do.
Hopefully this carnival can educate and upskill some emerging referees and encourage more of our people to grab the whistle, which is something we'll be putting a lot more emphasis on in the next three to five years.
This carnival follows on from the success of the Queensland Murri Carnival last month, particularly for our youth referees.
It was great to see the support network between the officials, going around the grounds to support their teammates and in terms of their on-field performance, listening to their match day coach, asking questions and afterwards not being afraid to sit down and talk about certain things that happened in their game.
We had a couple of our members from the QRL High Performance Unit share their wealth of knowledge and experience as a match day coach to these junior referees and that was a big positive.
To have them actually give time to them, to coach them, I think they appreciated that a lot and it reflected on their performance as well.
During my early years as a referee, I was lucky to have Leon Williamson (former New Zealand international referee) as a mentor which was the support I needed to stay refereeing, so I think the opportunity that these events offer in terms of connecting junior referees with the high performance unit are invaluable.
I think it's very important that our emerging referees know they have that support around them, which will be great to have when they get into preseason training and off the field when it comes to checking on each other's mental health.
