MFA Referees’ Technical Instructors Adrian Casha and Victor Mintoff and Fitness Instructor Ronald Zammit are currently attending a four-day Refereeing Assistance Programme (RAP) Courses at the Sheraton Hotel in Tirana, Albania.

The RAP Courses are organised annually and jointly by FIFA and UEFA for the top referees’ instructors in Europe to update knowledge, provide the latest teaching material and effective ways for teaching and learning, and aim for consistency amongst what is being taught to match officials and referee observers across Europe.

The two courses for technical and fitness instructors include practical sessions on the field of play and a lot of discussions in small groups.

This year’s course for technical instructors focuses on the use of modern teaching resources as well as technical issues such as offside, the identification of obvious goal scoring opportunities and promising attacks, challenges, offside and handball.

The course for fitness instructors is this year dealing with lower limb injury prevention, improving explosiveness and power, the need for quality training and monitoring fitness levels of our match officials.