Meet the young man making quite a name for himself in the UK refereeing scene

17-year-old Harry Galt from Glossop looks to have a big future ahead of him, after finishing as the runner-up of a national refereeing award.

He finished second in the Newcomer of the Year award, at the National Referee Recognition Awards, back in June. These were held at Wembley Stadium, in London.

Harry began his refereeing journey earlier last year, and says it is something he has wanted to do for a while. The young man from Glossop said he took up refereeing after he stopped playing football, as he wasn’t enjoying it anymore, but he wanted to remain involved with the sport in some capacity, so refereeing was the perfect alternative.

Harry was also keen to highlight the fact he sees this as his long-term career, “I have always wanted to do it as a career, a lot of people my age just do it to earn a bit of money but I want to progress as far as I can”.

He started out officiating children’s matches but wanted to progress further, and so he began to do open-age matches, which he found very tough at first, “You can get a lot of stick sometimes from players and parents, especially the older ones. “I used to find this hard to deal with, but I’m used to it now, you learn ways to prevent it as you get more experienced”, he added.

Harry was also keen to highlight the physical aspect of refereeing, “It’s not just mentally challenging but physically challenging as well, people don’t realise how tough it is to keep going for 90 minutes, you’re often the most active person on the pitch!”

The biggest game Harry has done so far is the Derbyshire Junior Cup final, where he was the linesman. Over 250 fans were present, and he says it was a great experience. Harry says he enjoys being the linesman as well as refereeing, as in his words, “It is nice to be out of the limelight sometimes.”

As mentioned, Harry was runner-up in a national award in early June, at the National Referee Recognition Awards, which took him by surprise, “I was pleased to even be invited, I definitely didn’t expect to be runner up in any of the awards, but it was a very pleasant surprise.”

Despite only being an official for around 18 months, Harry’s game has developed quite dramatically over this time, and he says a large part of this is through observing others, “The best way to improve is to watch as many other refs as you can, and watch how they operate and deal with certain situations, then you can try and add bits and pieces from their game to yours, and you will improve massively.”

Harry has still got a long way to go before he achieves his ultimate goal of becoming a professional referee, but he is without doubt on the right track, and has all the talent to go right to the very top. Speaking about his future plans, Harry said, “I just want to keep moving up in the rankings, I’m almost at level six now and I will be by the start of the new season hopefully. “It would mean everything to referee as a career, it is something I’ve always wanted to do, I’ve got a long way to go but I’ve only been doing it for a year and a half so hopefully I can get a few more promotions and see where that takes me.”