Folkestone joint-boss Micheal Everitt claims the FA are making life difficult for players and officials with constant rule-changing.

This season’s fad is to come down hard on time-wasting, as Invicta found to their cost in the FA Cup Second Qualifying Round at Margate.

They had left-back Ryan Khanye booked for taking too long over a throw-in with his side 1-0 up in the 35th minute.

It seemed a bizarre decision so early in the game and with Invicta comfortably the better side at the time.

And it would come back to bite them when Khanye picked up another yellow card for a 56th-minute challenge on Harrison Hatfull.

Everitt had no complaints with the second booking but was bemused by the first, adamant his man wasn’t time-wasting.

“A lot of what the referees have to do is quite hard because the FA always change the rules every single year and there’s a new initiative every single year,” said Everitt.

“They expect the referees to abide by those laws and the players to abide by those laws but half of us don’t even know what they are sometimes so I think they're putting unnecessary pressure on the refs.

“They regularly change the rules and while we go to a league meeting where they say you have to do this and you have to do that, it doesn’t always happen, or if it does happen they go overboard.

“A bit like our left-back getting booked. It’s just ridiculous.

“He’s trying to find someone’s feet and not give the ball away and they book him for time-wasting.

“It’s an absolute joke because we’ve never played like that.

“We play on the front foot, we attack teams, we want to come here and win, so that’s disappointing but that is a directive from the FA to referees, so that wasn’t the referee’s fault.”

Ibrahim Olutade met Scott Heard’s cross and Ira Jackson scored a superb late second as Invicta led twice at Hartsdown Park.

But Margate fought back through Steve Cawley and an injury-time Antonis Vasiliou strike to secure a replay on Tuesday night, although Folkestone felt there was a foul in the build-up to the second equaliser.

Report: Margate 2-2 Folkestone

Everitt said: “It’s disappointing not to win but I thought the lads were magnificent when we went down to 10 men and we just said in there it was a great effort.

“It was a proper FA Cup derby game and if you were a neutral today turning up you’d get your money’s worth.

“We gave them very little (at 1-0). I think they hit the crossbar off a free-kick out wide but we thought we were in control of the game and we thought we’d pick them off but then the red card changed that.

“I actually said to the boys at half-time we have to be careful and keep our discipline.

“You could see someone going off and we didn’t want it to be us but, unfortunately, it was.

“I thought when we went down to 10 men, we managed it well.

“I thought we kept the ball better with 10 men and created opportunities.

“You’re always disappointed when you concede but the lads in there said there was a definite pull-back on Kane Penn.

“That’s why they were arguing with the referee because the linesman actually went to put his flag up to say it was a foul and then for whatever reason decided not to.

“It’s disappointing but the lads put in an unbelievable shift and we’re proud of them.”