Something else I suggested a while back was allowing juniors to offset their yearly costs by refereeing for their club.

Each one you've suggested is a quality idea, IMO.

I'll add it to the list, but after the email I've sent to the club today, another meeting may not occur.

here's a novel idea - every friday night and saturday morning for a couple of months BASA could run an umpiring course.

This course would be attended by the u-16 and u-18 (all div's) teams that have the bye round that week. If less than 70% of team shows then they do not receive a championship point that round (i think you get one for a bye?? may be two??).

This could not be argued against by clubs and teams as the course would occur at the same times as games.

although not all these kids would go on to umpire, at least you would give the kids some understanding on the rules of the game, and if short on umpires they could be called upon to don a black and white and help out.

i think a simple pay rise and abuse cut scheme would work very nicely. I was a ref for 3 years and gave up because of these two things. The fact school basketball was paying me $20 - 25 a game to run up and down for two 20min halves no clock stopped and no abuse, as aposed to being so perfect and not allowed to shoot at basa stadiums or have shirt untucked and get $7 for quarters regularly stopped and cop abuse EVERYTIME you run past the bench. Whoopee.

Something needs to be done about it, i really applaud the ones who do umpire at the moment because they have ALOT of guts. If it wasn't for them we would have no games being played, no basketball. Anything you call as a ref is going to be ridiculed by one team and you always cop abuse from someone, ALWAYS. Try putting yourselves in their shoes next time your throwing abuse at them, because they aint doing it for the money!!!

Everyone says this is a BASA problem, and to some extent it is. However until the Clubs, who are BASA, take responsibility for this part of the game, then we won't have any solution. I know the clubs struggle in other facets of having enough personnel for the game, but how many have a person in their club responsible for developing and fostering the referee/umpires in their club.

Neil has great ideas, but it will take time to get the results. We focus too much on Junior officials who do not have many real life people management/coping skills.

By the way Yogee, is that how they treat conflict/differences of opinion. Put their head in the sand and hope we go away. We might, but the problem certainly doesn't.

Abuse of officials is the major reason why there are no new refs, so what if the pay is crap, for most of us it's not about the money.
The problem is the abuse and the only way to deal with it is to ask the clubs to set up their own abuse management policy and adhere to it.
Zero tolerance on junior games is a MUST. Officials must be encouraged to T up abusive coaches, players and eject problem spectators.
Junior officials need to be taken care of as it takes years to gain the experience needed to officiate the NBL, if they quit now because some coach gets his jollies out of intimidating kids, then there will be no future for the NBL in SA.
Sorry if I seem a bit over dramatic but these kids are the future of basketball in SA as much as the players are.