Green card experiment during CONIFA World Football Cup in London

REFEREE’S will be issuing red, yellow and green cards at the CONIFA World Football Cup which is being staged by ten non-league clubs in and around London.

CONIFA is the Confederation of Independent Football Association, which is the football federation for all associations outside FIFA.

Nine of the 10 club’s that are staging matches in this competition play on artificial pitches and Bromley’s Hayes Lane ground stages the opening ceremony at 19:00 on Thursday, 31 May, before the Group A clash between Barawa and Tamil Eelam gets underway an hour later.

Matches are being held by Aveley, Bedfont Sports, Bracknell Town, Bromley, Carshalton Athletic, Enfield Town, Fisher, Haringey Borough, Slough Town and Sutton United.

Enfield Town’s Queen Elizabeth II Stadium, which is the only venue with a grass playing surface, will stage the Grand Final on Saturday 9 June at 18:00.

English referee Mark Clattenburg may confuse spectators when he issues a green card to players at Hayes Lane on Thursday night.

“CONIFA have introduced a green card for the World Cup 2018 and will be used and shown to a player by the match official for dissent by a player towards a match official, opposition player or management and spectator; simulation; any kind to seek to gain an advantage for the players team.

“Any player who receives a green card must leave the field of play immediately but can be replaced if his team have not used all for of their substitutes.

“A player receiving a green card is not excluded from his teams next match,” said a spokesman for the tournament.

Africa’s Barawa, also known as Brava, is a port town in the southwestern Lower Shebelle region of Somalia. Barawa is the capital of the southwestern Somalia state.  They joined CONIFA in July 2016 and make their World Football Cup debut on Thursday night.

Asia’s Tamil Eelam is situated in the north-east of the Indian Ocean Island of Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) is the traditional homeland of Eelam Tamils, with Trincomalee serving as the cultural capital of the region.

They finished in eleventh-place in their last CONIFA World Football Cup campaign in 2014.

Purchase tickets for the CONIFA World Football Cup:  http://www.conifa.org/en/wfc-2018/wfc-2018-tickets/