The FA sets the annual registration fee for all referees. It is currently £20.

You need to register before 1 June each year. If you miss the deadline you may have to pay a late registration fee of £10.

New referees are automatically registered by the County for one year and the cost is included in the cost of the Basic Referee Training Course.

When you register you will be asked whether you intend to referee in youth football. If you do and you are 16-years-old or older, you will need a CRC dated within the last three years.

If you do not intend to referee in youth football but later change your mind, it is most important that you contact your parent County FA (The AFA for AFA referees) immediately and we will make arrangements with you to update your CRC if necessary.

If you were previously qualified but have not registered in one or more previous seasons we will be very pleased to help you back into refereeing. Please contact referees@amateur-fa.com

Non-AFA-parent county referees can always register with the AFA as an Associate but you need to register with your parent county first. Associates are eligible for appointments to AFA County Cup matches and you will receive all the communications that AFA parent County referees receive including newsletters and invitations to training sessions and other events.

Similarly, AFA referees can register as Associates with other local County FAs at no cost. You can do this when you register online by completing the section ‘Request to Join Associate County’.

If you do not register, you will not be able to be appointed to matches by any competition affiliated to the FA or the County FA. You would not be covered by the County’s Public Liability Insurance and there would be no chance of receiving County Cup Final or Representative Match appointments.

There would also be no opportunity for promotion, no communications from your County FA (newsletters and invitations to training and other events), you would not receive any information on updates/amendments to the Laws of the Game annually and you would not receive a County handbook. Your details will not appear in the County handbook.

After two years of being unregistered, you would have to take the exams again if you wanted to re-register and after five years you would have to take the whole course again.

As an unregistered referee, you would only be able to referee as a 'club referee' and be appointed to games by a home club if no registered referee is appointed by a competition. Naturally, this would limit where you could referee and the level of game you would be offered.