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Red Card Sanctions

John Munro

What do other leagues do in respect of red card sanctions?

In the Oxfordshire Walking Football League, we play rounds of fixtures once a month and a player receiving a red card is (a) banned for the rest of the games that day and (b) also banned from the next 2 rounds of games. 

However, standard County FA rules for 'regular' football normally dictate a 2 'match' ban.  We consider a 2 'match' ban equates to our 2 rounds, as if we had to strictly comply with the word 'matches' a player could then potentially turn up at the very next round of games, sit out the first two games and then play in the remain matches that day - hardly a great deterent!

Discuss......

  • This has been raised previously at the National Advisory Group. It is recognised that the FA Misconduct Process does not align itself with walking football as pointed out by others. 

    Work is being done at a national level so that appropriate methods for sanctioning offenders in walking football can be achieved. It should be recognised that walking football is not a one size fits all with leagues being of different formats and games of different durations . Hopefully the 2026/27 FA Misconduct/Discipline guidance will have a suitable solution included.

  • in reply to Michael Hill

    Thanks Mick

    Any idea when those 2026/27 FA Misconduct/Discipline Guidelines will actually be issued?

  • in reply to John Munro

    Sorry I dont, but imagine that it will be in time for the regular season beginning the 1st July. No guarantee that we will have got it in for this year as the FA are still working on the offical SCOR (Standard Code of Rules) document for walking football which will include misconduct and discipline content. It is possible that the ongoing talks between the FA and WFA may have delayed completion of the SCOR due to it potentially being out of date as soon as it was published.

  • in reply to Michael Hill

    Just wondering whether there is any update at all - our league starts again in a fortnight and we are still unsure about what we should do with a player that has been issued with a 3 match ban.  We are really not happy with a situation where he could still attend on the day, sit out 3 games and be allowed to play in the last 2 games and believe that to be a genuine punishment he should he barred from the next 3 round-robins.....answers/suggestions on a postcard please....

  • in reply to John Munro

    Hi John, I would suggest in the absence of any update that your league includes its own discipline protocol within its league rules. 

  • Well, we have now had our reply from Oxfordshire FA and that is that if they suspend a player for 3 matches it has to be just that - 3 short games, so if a team has 5 games in an afternoon, the player can take part in the last two. 

    When I challenged it and asked where the advice came from, the response was:-

    "The answer came from Sporting Integrity Matters who are the discipline administrators for the OFA and a lot of other counties and as such apply The FA regulations"

    Really thinkmit is time for the FA to get on top of this and realise that round-robin events made up of short 15-20 min games are simply not the same as traditional single fixtures of 90 mins!

  • in reply to Ian Harley

    I believe the ban should be based on what the red card was issued for. WFA Laws still have the issuing of a red card for a DOGSO offence, unless there was a genuine attempt to play the ball. However, a red card would be issued if a player is daft enough to receive two blue cards in the same match. (Both FA & WFA Law), but should the same punishment apply to a player that is guilty of a violent conduct offence or serious foul play (much more serious) ? 

  • in reply to Russell Stait

    As you can see Russell the length of ban is already dependent on the actual offence, but we have the issue of aligning the length of the ban more appropriately to the differing lengths of matches used within walking football. 

  • in reply to Michael Hill

    Not wanting to state the obvious or indeed put any pressure on the FA but...... with WF getting more and more competitive in leagues etc and people's desire to win at odds with the ethos of walking football sadly I feel we are going to get more and more cases of what John originally posted and we do need representative sanctions for WF sooner rather than later to hopefully act as deterrent or indeed remove the worse offenders from our game. As at the end of the day it is only a game and lots of people are losing sight of this. It's Walking Football after all. Not football.

  • in reply to Christopher Fitzpatrick

    Well said Chris...we do need this resolved by the FA as soon as practical - in our case, a suspension of 3 x 15 minutes games (meaning the player can then play in games 4 and 5 on same day, simply isn't harsh enough for violent conduct and very aggressive behaviour.....which continued after the game when the player walked all the way around the pitch to continue his uncalled for verbal attack on the opposition player!