Cooling-Off Periods, Ten-Match Bans and a Record 41,500 Referees: What the FA's Discipline Report Means for Your Club

A referee in black talks calmly with two captains and two coaches in the centre circle of a muddy grassroots pitch while both teams wait apart in the penalty areas on an overcast autumn morning

The FA published its 2025-26 Grassroots Behaviour and Discipline Report on 1 October, and most of the headlines are good. Behaviour on grassroots pitches is better than the noise on social media suggests, offences against referees are down, and there are more registered match officials than ever.

But one number is going the wrong way, and the rules for this season have changed in ways your coaches and captains need to know about before their next fixture — not after a referee stops the game and sends everyone to the penalty areas.

Here's what the report says, what's new for 2026-27, and a short checklist for committees.

The numbers that matter

The report covers grassroots football at Step 5 and below in the men's game and Tier 3 and below in the women's game, adult and youth. Across roughly 1.2 million fixtures a season:

More than 1.3 million Respect marks were submitted in 2025-26, and 90.5% of matches were marked "good".
Serious misconduct happened in fewer than 0.09% of fixtures. The game is not falling apart, whatever the group chat says.
Offences against match officials fell from 1.37 to 1.09 per 1,000 fixtures.
Registered match officials hit a record of around 41,500, and the FA puts referee retention at 82% — its highest yet.
Discrimination reports rose from 2.28 to 2.69 per 1,000 fixtures. Race, ethnicity or colour (0.92 per 1,000) and sexual orientation (0.80) were the most reported categories. The average ban for a proven case was seven matches.

For context, the FA's grassroots strategy update a few days earlier put the affiliated game at 124,500 teams — up 10% since the end of 2023-24 — and 1.6 million players, backed by more than a million volunteers. More teams means more fixtures, more referees needed and more chances for one bad afternoon to define a club.

What's changed for 2026-27

Discrimination: at least ten matches

That seven-match average is the reason for the biggest change. Under the FA's strengthened sanction guidelines, an aggravated breach — abuse that refers to someone's ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or another protected characteristic — now carries a standard suspension of at least ten matches, with a fine and an education course on top.

If your club's code of conduct still describes discrimination in vague terms, or quotes old ban lengths, it's out of date.

Cooling-off periods go national

Cooling-off periods are being rolled out nationally this season, and they change what happens on a Sunday morning when a game turns ugly:

The referee can pause play if the match is becoming unsafe.
Players from both sides go to their penalty areas.
The coaches and captains meet the referee in the middle to calm things down.
A player who leaves the penalty area without permission gets a sin bin — ten minutes off.
There can be no more than two cooling-off periods in a match. A third means the game is abandoned.
Every cooling-off period is reported to the league or cup running the fixture. It doesn't automatically trigger FA disciplinary action, but your league will know.

The clubs that handle this well will be the ones whose coaches and captains already know what's expected when the whistle goes. The ones that handle it badly will be the ones where a player wanders off to argue with the opposition while everyone else is in the box.

Sanctions are published every month

The FA will keep publishing disciplinary sanctions monthly to show action is being taken against what it calls "the small minority" behaving badly on matchdays. Its monthly charges list names players, officials and clubs, and already stretches well below the EFL into non-league and youth competitions. Assume that what happens on your pitch can end up in public.

Positivity Champions

There's a carrot as well as a stick. Each month the FA recognises a Positivity Champion. County FAs nominate clubs that have done something targeted about behaviour, whether with players, coaches or spectators, or in the wider community. Winners get a matchday or training-session visit from the Community Shield and a bundle from the Respect shop. Plenty of clubs do this work quietly. It's worth telling your County FA about it.

Five things to do before your next home game

1. Brief every coach and captain on cooling-off periods. Ten minutes at your next coaches' meeting or a voice note in the managers' WhatsApp: what happens, where players go, that leaving the box means ten minutes off, and that a third pause abandons the game. Make sure assistant managers and parent helpers know too. They're often the ones on the touchline when it kicks off.

2. Update your code of conduct. Put the ten-match minimum for discriminatory abuse in plain words in the player, coach and spectator codes, and say how the club will handle it internally on top of any FA sanction. If you haven't reviewed your core documents since last season, our club policy pack guide covers the six every committee should have.

3. Put a respect and discipline page on your club website. One page: your codes of conduct, your welfare officer's name and contact, how to report discriminatory abuse, and a line on cooling-off periods so visiting parents know what they're watching. It's the page sponsors and funders look at when they're deciding whether a club is well run, and it shows parents you take safeguarding seriously. LeaguePages club sites can host it alongside fixtures and news.

4. Put Silent Support Weekend in the diary. The next ones are 14–15 November 2026 and 13–14 March 2027. The FA says more than a million people took part in March 2026, and 97% reported behaviour that held steady or improved. Tell parents now, not on the Friday before.

5. Look after your referees. A record 41,500 officials is good news, but it only lasts if they keep coming back. Have someone meet the referee on arrival, show them where to change, sort the match fee before kick-off and thank them at full time. That's the cheapest retention scheme in football.

Why it matters off the pitch too

Discipline used to feel like the County FA's business and nobody else's. It isn't any more. Monthly sanctions are public, sponsors search a club's name before they sign anything, and grant funders increasingly ask about safeguarding and conduct as part of judging whether a club is well governed. We made the same point about governance and paperwork in our piece on Martyn's Law. The clubs that write things down and publish them are the ones that look fundable.

There's a money angle in the other direction too. Every abandoned match, unpaid fine and lost sponsor costs a club that is probably already stretched. If your committee is having the "where does next season's money come from" conversation, the steady options are covered in The Lottery Lifeline. And if you run an adult-only section, Cash4Clubs is open until 1 January 2027.

The report's real message is that most grassroots football is played the right way, by people who give up their weekends to make it happen. This season's rules are about protecting that majority from a small minority. Make sure your club is on the right side of the monthly list.

Up the volunteers. Non-league — making the difference.