WES Morgan, captain of Leicester City, recently asked for referees to sit down with his team and explain what is a yellow card and what is not.

His team, he said, are confused after receiving a number of yellow cards, some of which seem to be for trivial offences.

I have some sympathy for his point of view, especially as there have been a number of changes in the last three years.

In some circumstances, identical looking offences now have different outcomes.

However, listening to supporters at football matches, it is obvious Leicester players are not the only ones who may find some clarification useful.

To start with it may surprise many that in the Laws of the Game, there are only six cautionable offences listed, plus two new ones connected with VAR, which we need not concern ourselves with here.

The six listed it, however, have many subsections, which would take more space to explain than I have available in a single column, so I will leave them for future weeks.

Let me first say a little more about yellow cards.

A yellow card is purely the public announcement a player has been cautioned. This is so often sadly called a ‘booking’.

This is not a term we recognise in refereeing; it is a caution.

Whereas in professional football, the referee tends to just show the yellow card, in local football we are required to do a little more.

We have to take the players name, tell them they have been cautioned and warn them if they commit another cautionable offence, they will be sent off.

The referee should then show the yellow card. If the referee should for some reason forget to show the yellow card, (as I have done) it does not mean the caution has not been made.

I sometimes wonder if perhaps professional players should also be given this warning as to their future conduct.

So often you see them, go on to commit another, often silly or unnecessary cautionable offence and this then of course, means the inevitable red card.