There are a number of Important changes to Discipline Regulations for the 2013-14 football season.

Here is a summary of the key changes for 2013-14:

Commencement of suspensions

With immediate effect, all automatic suspensions will commence 14 days after the date of the offence, rather than 21 days as previously. For example, if you have a player sent off for receiving two yellow cards on the 7 September, they will be suspended for one match commencing on the 21 September.

Types of football

The categories of football have been updated and are as follows; Saturday, Sunday, Midweek, Representative, Schools, Veterans and Friendly. There is no longer a category covering just youth football. If, for example, a 16 year old player were to be sent off playing for their Sunday youth team, their suspension would prevent them from playing any Sunday football, including adult (should they play for an adult team).

Sanction Guidelines

There is now a published list of sanction guidelines, which are appilcable to those misconduct cases not covered by an automatic sanction. This to allow clubs and their participants to understand the possible outcome of a proven case of misconduct. The sanction guidelines appear on a downloadable item within the Discipline Handbook, which appears later in this page and within the Clubs section of the website.

Suspensions from friendlies

There are a number of other important updates, including the way in which players that are sent off in friendlies are dealt with and the publication of sanction guidelines to assist Clubs when dealing with misconduct cases. A player dismissed in a friendly match will now miss one match, regardles of the offence. The suspension is from friendly football only and commences immediately, so the participant must miss the next friendly played by that team. These are carried over until the next friendly played should there be none left prior to the season starting. It does not affect the league programme and league games are not used to complete the suspension.

Should a case involve a more serious incident of misconduct, then a further charge could be raised and any subsequent sanction would be from ALL football.

 It is therefore very important that all Clubs and Leagues familiarise themselves with the changes. To assist with these changes, The FA has produced an interactive Discipline Handbook, which is available to view online -