Capital Football delays ref pay parity for men and women

But the increases they have made to referees' fees means Canberra's clubs have been slugged with increased costs on the eve of the 2020 season.

Referees will get paid the same for the men's and women's competitions across their state leagues, as well as for the juniors in their premier leagues.

But when it comes to their top flights - NPL1 and NPLW - referees get more for taking charge of a men's game compared with the women.

Capital Football hope to introduce pay parity for the 2021 premier league season, having done so at the lower levels this year.

It's believed there are higher technical and fitness requirements to referee an NPL1 game compared with an NPLW one.

Capital Football chairwoman Fran Sankey said they opted against moving to parity because it wouldn't be fair to pay lower-qualified referees the same rates as their top-grade referees.

But she said the plan was to grow the pool of higher-qualified referees so they could take the final step to pay parity next year.

They increased the match fees for NPLW to halfway between the men's premier league first and second division.

A referee will get $126 for taking charge of an NPL1 game, $104 for an NPLW match and $82 for an NPL2 game.

"It's a start with our pay parity at all levels - except for that very top tier," Sankey said.

"And if we had more referees than we had leagues then this wouldn't be an issue.

"But we don't want to, in fixing or addressing one issue in equality and parity, then go and cause other issues of parity inequity on a skillbase where people have worked very hard to get in that top tier.

"To referee men's NPL there's a technical and physical requirement ... then to pay somebody who can referee at a lower league level and pay them the same when they haven't earned that right for me would cause issues.

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"Let's invest in our referees so we'll have more referees in that top tier. We're giving ourselves a year to get our referees to that level so we can have equality across the board."

The referee fees haven't been adjusted since the 2018 season, with the clubs to bear the brunt of the extra costs.

But the clubs were only notified of the increases at the start of February.

It's less than two months before the start of the season and well after most clubs had already done their budgeting and set their fees.

Gungahlin United president Neil Harlock backed the reasoning behind the increases, but said they would take a hit financially as a result.

They have about 1600 players across 130 teams with the increase of referee fees costing them "a few thousand" dollars.

"I'm perfectly fine with the reasoning of equalling a bit of parity. Absolutely no problems whatsoever," Harlock said.

"I guess the challenge is more the timing because we had set registration fees back in October-November last year and ... we can't really go back to members and [increase their fees]."

Sankey admitted it was an area they needed to improve on.

"I'm the chair of the board and I'll take accountability for that," she said.

"There's room for improvement in the timeliness of doing things. The decision has come out in January.

"They're not significant costs across the board and if clubs are struggling with their budgeting they can certainly have a conversation with us about how we work with it."