It is clear that the current sanction is not having the desired effect and not walking is still very prevalent so the change to the 4 team count and the award of a penalty has to be given a chance. 

I would like to hear more from the trial events, were they over a League season or at festivals/tournaments. As most games tend in my experience to be 1-0 or 0-0, the award of a penalty will make a big difference and players are likely to pressure the refs more than under the current rules. I think I played in one of the trial events. My team got to three not-walking offences very quickly but did not concede a penalty. I think we slowed down but also speculated that refs became more hesitant about awarding a penalty. It was a very well run friendly tournament played on a very hot day. The refs were very good and the players played in the right sporting spirit. 

Thanks for your responses Len Cheston  and Michael Hill 

Something similar has been tried in a few club run tournaments, when as soon as a team reached five non-walking offences, the player committing the fifth was blue carded and sin-binned for two minutes, so team affected as opposed to player. The referee has to do the "totting up", and one unfortunate player, who maybe hasn't committed an offence at all is penalised. When refereeing at a County tournament, I tell players clearly on the second offence, after awarding the free kick that it is his/her second offence before restarting play.

Hi Russell Stait thanks for your feedback here. One of the things tested in the trial was whether the sanction was a blue card or a penalty, and which one of these proved to be a bigger deterrent. A lot of the sentiment shared was that the ethos of Walking Football is to keep players active and issuing blue cards to someone who may well have committed their first non-walking offence seemed overly harsh. From a safety lens, could reducing a team by one player also cause overexertion to the remaining players on the pitch? These were all considered and discussed within the focus groups. 

There would have been a number of penalties awarded yesterday in the 5 league games I refereed but only one player fell foul of the three offence rule to receive a blue card ( a number of others substituted after 2 warnings). It will be interesting to see if over time it does influence the amount of non walking offences committed by teams. (As an aside the league uses already a local rule for a blue card and penalty for Dogso , one awarded yesterday plus unfortunately a red card for Offensive and insulting language.)

How long the game is makes a difference to the number of offences as well and how you sanction in a ten minute game as pose to a 20 minute game. therefore a set number of offences then openly and reset would work well.