17 Sep International Federation of American Football
A shared approach to developing sport officials – collaboration with International Federation of American Football.
The International Federation of American Football (IFAF) have backed the ONSIDE project to have a positive impact on the area of sport officiating and agreed to collaborate for the duration of the project.
IFAF recognise the benefits of working together across sports to develop generic skills and competences of sport officials. This already takes place in some cases at the national level and IFAF would like to expand this shared approach to skills development at the European level, through links to the ONSIDE project. American football can benefit from the development of resources to support officiating across a breadth of sports.
The ONSIDE project partners are delighted to collaborate with like-minded international federations who see the value in such a shared approach. Through input and collaboration across a range of sports, the project can have widespread impact for the benefit of the whole sport sector.
In particular IFAF will now contribute as a consulting network throughout each aspect of the project, and will apply learning from the project in their sport. American Football officials will have the opportunity to test ONSIDE resources and learning products.
Ben Gittus from ONSIDE project coordinator EOSE said: “It is fantastic that at this early stage of the project an international federation like IFAF have recognised the benefits of the project and wish to collaborate and learn from the project, as well as contributing their own learning and expertise towards the project outcomes”.
Richard MacLean, President of IFAF, welcomed the Federation’s involvement, “During my time with IFAF I have been fortunate enough to gain an insight into the work our members do to recruit, retain, develop and deploy officials. As with other partners in the project, we have some outstanding practitioners whose knowledge and experience can, I am sure, add real value as well as ensure any learnings emerging from it are used to inform our own best practice.”
MacLean concluded “I am delighted that Bill Lemonnier and Jim Briggs will lead on this for IFAF and I wish all parties the best of luck over the coming years.”
The International Federation of American Football (IFAF) is the international governing body for the sport of American football and is responsible for all regulatory, competition, performance and development aspects of the game on a global level. www.ifaf.org
The ONSIDE project will explore and define, for the first time at the EU level, the generic competences, skills and knowledge expected of sport officials – covering all sports and nations. ONSIDE is a three-year project running from January 2018 to December 2020 and is funded through the European Union Erasmus+ Programme. www.onside-sport.eu
The ONSIDE project is co-funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Collaborative Partnerships in Sport programme.
Full list of project partners: European Observatoire of Sport and Employment (EOSE), Sports Officials UK (SOUK), Association Française du Corps Arbitral Multisports (AFCAM), European Handball Federation (EHF), European Table Tennis Union (ETTU), European Athletics, SportMalta, Dutch Olympic Committee * Dutch Sports Federation (NOC*NSF), Romanian Football Federation (FRF), British Wheelchair Basketball, National Sports Academy “Vassil Levski”.