It was confirmed at a meeting of the Suburban League last night, that it has been chosen as one of six “pilots” to be used by the FA to extend the match based disciplinary procedure beyond leagues in the National System.

That means that the Reserve Team will come broadly in line with the 1^st Team in that if a player is sent off he will miss a number of matches, rather than receiving a suspension for a set period of time.  Generally speaking, it will make suspensions fairer and more realistic and is to be welcomed.

The differences between the 1^st Team and 2^nd Team procedure is that the “pilot” scheme for the Reserves will be administered by the County FA’s (Middlesex in our case) and that any suspension will come into force 21 days after the sending-off, rather than 14 as remains the case with the 1^st Team.  If a player is sent off in a reserve team match, the suspension will be based upon reserve matches but he will miss all football from the time the suspension starts until it finishes, i.e. he could not play in the 1^st Team or the Youth Team during that period.

There appears to have been a degree of confusion about the venue for Saturday’s opening friendly away to CB Hounslow.  Anyone attending will find the address of the venue on the message board.  Ashford will be fielding a team mostly of triallists under the eagle eyes of Neil Cummings, our new assistant manager, and Wilson Frimpong, the new reserve team manager.

In the meantime, this coming Saturday has been designated as a “work day” to get some fencing repairs completed plus a number of other jobs.  If anyone can spare a bit of time, please report to the ground from 10.00 on Saturday morning.