At a meeting to be held at the Essex FA's Chelmsford headquarters today, the Hadleigh Carport Southend Borough Combination will express their anger at their referees being removed from domestic matches to officate as assistants at County games.

Said Combination fixtures secretary Les Phillips: "A lot of hard work goes into getting all the games in local football played -- and part of this is having refs for these matches.

"It's hard enough but all our efforts come to nothing when the County FA take whole groups of our referees away to act as assistants at Essex cup games."

The problem became particularly acute last weekend when the County's Essex Premier Cup was staged and the Boro. Comb will be making its voice heard strongly that moving officials from officiating in the middle for domestic games to running the line at County level is unacceptable.

Published Wednesday October 30, 2002

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