A problem that really plagued the AUDL's first year was the referee situation. More involved than observers, the AUDL referees play a larger role in the game than most players were anticipating. Each team was in charge of finding and training their own referees. This led to a lot of inconsistency across the board with calls and signals.
Earlier this year the situation was looking to be the same with teams hiring and training their own officials. Breeze owner Aaron Foreman had contracted FISO (Flag It Sports Officials) a local official training group to provide referees for their home games. He recognized the problem posed by not having uniform referee training and education from his time involved with the NFL, and offered to the league to have FISO train all of the officials.
"A lot of the players are still getting used to playing with on field referees, and having them make different calls and signals would only be creating more frustration for these guys. So, I made my offer to the league," Foreman said.
The league tentatively accepted Foreman's proposal and FISO is in strong consideration for training all AUDL referees for the 2013 season. The original plans were to fly FISO representatives out to each location, but this is likely to change due to logistics.
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