At the start of 2024, our Referee Development Officer, Harvey Newstead represented The FA on a referee exchange with the Danish Football Association.

Harvey represented The FA alongside fellow Level 1 Futsal Referee, Carl Jones, from Sheffield & Hallamshire FA. The exchange saw two Danish Futsal match officials visit England previously, in November 2023, operating across matches on the Women’s and Men’s FA National Futsal Series.

Across the three day trip to Copenhagen, the pair officiated two matches on the Danish Futsal League. The matches included fixtures between 2nd and 4th place sides Albertslund IF and København Futsal, as well as a fixture between 9th and 7th place sides Brøndbyernes IF and Lystrup Futsal. Harvey and Carl officiated together as Referee 1 and Referee 2, with the Danish Football Association providing a 3rd Referee and Timekeeper for the matches.

Marc Birkett, The FA National Futsal Referees Development Officer said: “'Having the opportunity to send our top level futsal referees to another country to officiate is important to our growing futsal programme as not only does it allow the officials to travel but also prepares them for the most important stage of our season. We have been fortunate enough to build a strong relationship with the Danish FA which extends to sharing of teaching resources, key match incident panels and the referee exchange, all of which we look to continue next season. The feedback we have had from all of our exchanges to date has been positive and it was great to see that Harvey continued that trend with two excellent performances out there.”