Junior, intermediate and underage soccer may be hit by a referees' strike this weekend after the Irish Soccer Referees' Society (ISRS) instructed its members not to make themselves available for any games other than those in the National League from this Saturday.
The action, which follows an emergency meeting of the society's committee in Dublin on Tuesday night, arises out of a dispute with the FAI over the annual seminars at which referees are tested for the following season.
If the strike goes ahead, virtually all of the games scheduled for this weekend would be affected, with the number of matches hit rising by next weekend, if the dispute were to continue, to over 2,000.
The society is unhappy that eight referees in Wicklow, who missed their seminar in April amid confusion over whether the seminar would go ahead or not, have not been allowed to be tested again in the county. The organisation also claims that a series of promises made to it by the FAI with regard to the overall treatment of referees have not been kept.
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