LOCAL referee Mark Philpott has taken a giant stride towards to refereeing in the Football League after he was promoted to the National List of Assistant Referees. Mark, a Level 3 referee from Falmouth, has been refereeing in the Conference South and the Southern Football League before his promotion and it was his excellent performances at this level that caught the assessors' eyes.

"The promotion is based on your performances, your commitment and how good your paperwork is along with many other things," said Mark. "There are 400 active referees at my level refereeing around the country and according to the assessors' marks I was in the top 20 in the country which I'm obviously pretty pleased about."

Mark started refereeing in 1998/1999 season after retiring from playing due to injuries. He had played in the South Western League and wanted to stay involved in the game and so took up the much maligned art of officialdom.

Mark has to travel to Warwick University in June to attend a meeting where he will receive his kit for the step up. He must then undertake a fitness test in July before he is passed as an assistant referee for the Football League.

"The fitness test is new this year. It has come from FIFA and it's a fairly stringent test. The old one consisted of running seven laps of the pitch in 12 minutes whereas the new one is walking ten times round to make it more realistic for what we do during a match."

Once on the National List, the proverbial sky is the limit.

"I'd imagine I'd start in League 2, but if you're good enough you will get pushed up the leagues. You can make it to the Championship fairly quickly if you're good enough. I'm not saying I'm going to be good, but I'll definitely do my best. I've already been involved in two live Sky games at Exeter last year. To start with, you get the games local to you, so although we're losing Torquay, we're hopefully gaining Exeter to the league. If you do well with those games, you'll get matches all over the place, no matter where you live."

Mark will be the most South Westerly linesman on the list and thinks that it will be good for refereeing in the county.

"There's a lot of good young referee's in the county and them knowing that it is definitely possible to make it to the league will be a big incentive for them to keep trying."