Work obligations caused by the situation means some senior referees may not be able to commit to officiating as many games.

"I've been speaking to a few of our senior referees and once these restrictions lift, two of them are going to be tied up with work because of the backlog," referees coordinator Jason McKenzie said.

"You can't just replace them by putting them through courses, that's a minimum two year process.

"It doesn't matter what we do, we're still going to have a shortage because we didn't have the consistency of referees coming through, and when you do get consistency, they're generally school age. But as soon as they finish their HSC some move away for study."

Football Wagga hopes to get a season up and running by mid-July and will continue into at least October, when some referees may not be available.

McKenzie also has to allow for the possibility of midweek games being played in towns outside of Wagga should ground availability become an issue when summer sports return.

McKenzie said once a season schedule is confirmed they will be able to organise a course.

"As soon as they ease restrictions and give us a start date we'll run a course hopefully two weeks before the season kicks off, and they can into games as soon as the season starts really," he said.

"We'd get as many through that as we can, and that would alleviate the burden on the senior referees we have to do centre now.

"Instead of doing 6-8 games over the weekend they could do two centres and help mentor the others.

"If there's a shortage like last year, I think one of our young referees was doing anywhere up to nine or ten games a weekend.

"He's a bloody good referee, but by the same token you don't want to overutilise that talent because you can get burnout, which can affect decision making and the game suffers then."

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