SOMERSET official Kieron Salmons has spoken of his pride and delight at claiming a county first by winning a call-up to the prestigious Dallas Cup tournament next year.

Salmons, a football development administrator with the Somerset FA, gained promotion to Level 4 refereeing status at the start of this season and is a familiar figure maintaining law and order at County League, Western League and Southern League fixtures, as a referee or running the line.

The 23-year-old was quickly inducted into the South West Regional Academy, which has afforded him opportunity to gain experience of refereeing Premier League academy games in under-14s and under-16s age brackets.

Salmons’ performances in the middle led to him being invited to apply to officiate at the Premier League Under-16 International Tournament at Warwick University, an offer that came to fruition when SW Regional Academy co-ordinator Martin Cassidy gave him the green light to attend an event that also acted as a selection process for the 2015 Dallas Cup.

The high-class, invitation-only tournament in Texas has been staged annually around Easter time since 1980 for youth teams across the globe, and has involved many players who have gone on to become household names, David Beckham, Raul, Edu, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney among them.

To be in with a chance of featuring in the 2015 showpiece, Salmons, who lives in Taunton and attended the town’s Heathfield School before a studying at Bridgwater College, first had to impress with the whistle at the Warwick event, one which involved four continental teams in Chivas, Gladbach, CSKA Moscow and Benfica.

He said: “I was lucky enough to be chosen by Martin Cassidy to attend the selection tournament at Warwick.

“We were coached by some very experienced coaches who watched our refereeing performances and ultimately decided whether we would benefit from travelling to Dallas to referee in next year’s tournament.

“I had always felt that even if I didn’t make the cut to go to Dallas, I could still take so much from all I had learnt as a referee, and about myself, over that weekend.”

The patience of a ref then became very much a virtue as Salmons faced an agonising wait to discover whether he had been picked.

He added: “I was delighted to find out I had been called into the group of eight referees to travel to Dallas on March 23 as the first-ever referee in Somerset to be invited.”