SPORTS fans are being welcomed back to venues across England this week as coronavirus restrictions are eased.

Football, greyhound racing, horse racing, rugby league and rugby union are among the sports to open their doors to fans as the third step of the Government’s coronavirus recovery road map is implemented.

Larger seated outdoor venues will be able to admit up to 10,000 spectators.

Smaller outdoor venues capacities will be capped at 4,000 or 50 per cent, whichever is the lowest.

The key changes to be aware of are:-

From step three, spectators will be permitted to view events on both public and private land but need to adhere to social distancing rules and social gathering limits set at groups of 30 outdoors and six people/two households indoors.

Multiple numbers of these group sizes are permitted as long as social distancing rules are followed.

Spectators are allowed indoors, but the total number of all participants, coaches, officials and spectators must comply with the ventilation rates permitted by the particular venue

At larger events, capacity limits for spectators set by The Government will apply.

For indoor events this is 1000 or 50 per cent of capacity and for outdoor events this is 4000 or 50 per cent of capacity (whichever is lower in both cases).

As part of step three of the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown, both outdoor and indoor hospitality at ‘non-elite’ football is permitted.

All participants must follow Government guidance on hospitality settings and specific advice for sport facility operators available on the Government’s website.

People using clubhouses and hospitality facilities must adhere to legal gathering limits and wider government guidance.

Indoor gatherings of either six people (the ‘rule of six’) or two households can take place.

This means that organised indoor adult and children football can return.

For organised indoor sport and physical activity, there’s no limit on group numbers so long as people adhere to capacity restrictions on indoor facilities.

The maximum occupancy of each indoor facility should be limited by providing a minimum of 100 square ft per person.

An FA spokesman said: "This guidance applies to all youth and adult football and futsal, including all formats of the game.

"If there are any further updates from the Government, we will communicate these in due course and we will continue to update our guidance as we move through the different steps of the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown.

"It is extremely important that clubs, players, coaches, match officials, league officials, volunteers, parents, carers, and facility providers continue to strictly follow both the UK Government's latest guidance on COVID-19 and respective bespoke guidance documents from the FA.

"Any incidents of non-compliance should be reported to the local County Football Association."