Assistant referee on the line

Dana Cup 2019 Preview

Surrey Officials will once again head off to the Dana Cup.

For the last five years a select group of Surrey referees have attended the Dana Cup in Denmark as part of the Surrey Development Group.

The Dana Cup is Denmark´s largest sporting event, the world´s third largest youth soccer tournament and is the world´s most international youth soccer tournament with 90% foreign teams. 

Ahead of the Cup getting underway next week, we spoke to three referees who have attended in previous years and to one of those who is going for the first time and excited for the new challenge.

Shawn Barclay, Level 4 referee has attended the Dana Cup for the past four seasons and will be attending once again this July.

Shawn had this to say on how he first got involved, “The Surrey Development Group offers all of the referees to have the chance to attend the Dana Cup each year. Four seasons ago I put my name forward and was chosen by Referee Development Officer Tim Lawrence and David Hutchinson.”

Officiating at the tournament offers a new kind of experience for our referees to help them with their development in their refereeing journey.

Joe Wright, Level 5 referee explains the learnings he will take away from the experience. “The experience of working with teams and officials from different counties, exposing myself to different styles of play, including the different ways in which some referees from different counties officiate.”

The boys section of the tournament runs from U11 to U19 and the girls sections run from U12 to U19. The format of the games is 7v7 and 11v11 which offers our referees the chance to turn back time officiating a small format of the game.

Dominic Fairhurst, Level 7 referee, explains what he expects from attending the 2019 Dana Cup. “I expect a smaller number of games of younger age groups as I am one of the new referees this season at the Dana Cup, but I am still hopeful for a final.”

It is sure to be a busy nine days for the Surrey officials with not just refereeing matches to look forward to and their agenda for the week is:

Day 1 - Travel to Hjorring

Day 2 - Familiarisation and a technical session (Body language and selling decisions) for our referees

Day 3 - Meetings for our referees and allocation of games, technical session (Assistant refereeing) and opening ceremony live on Danish TV and the Dana Cup Website

Day 4 - Start refereeing

Day 5 - Refereeing matches

Day 6 - Refereeing and acting as Assistant referees

Day 7 - Refereeing and acting as Assistant referees

Day 8 - B finals in the morning and A finals in morning and afternoon in the main stadium

Day 9 - Travel back home