A HELL of a long weekend! 10.30am to 7.30pm at Wrexham on Saturday. Up at 6am to drive to Daventry for a national seminar. Home at 7pm armed with a takeaway and a bottle of Chardonnay.

And to what end? I have already revealed that the FA has begun a root and branch overhaul of refereeing.

It felt we had begun to lag behind our Continental colleagues and is thus determined to restore our officials to the top of the world listings.

These changes are not merely affecting the professional game. Regional managers have been appointed to oversee recruitment and retention at grassroots level, to facilitate good training methods, and to ensure that the local parks guys are operating to a uniform high standard.

Refs who have previously taken the money and not run will now have to work for their wages.

So at Pleasington, Towneley and Wilsons, you should see a real difference.

With regard to the seminar it stressed that mostly we ARE getting things right and ARE operating at world-class level.

It did however, point out various areas for fine tuning. The ability to spot pulling and pushing early without allowing it to develop into something more serious.

The requirement to apply advantage but not to the detriment of control. It asked us to be more clear in differentiating careless challenges from reckless (yellow card) and those involving excessive force (red card).

It demanded more accurate offside assessment from assistants and reminded us all of the need for teamwork.

In essence there was no revolution unveiled. Just a gentle reminder where we have let things slip and the need to be vigilant at all times.

Quite an enjoyable day, but not exactly a relaxing weekend.