The familiar figure of referee Darren Drysdale will take charge of Dale’s home game against Leyton Orient on Tuesday.

The Lincolnshire official has been in the middle for 12 previous Dale games since he joined the league list in 2004, the most recent of which was last season’s televised 0-0 draw at Bury.

Dale had Ian Henderson dismissed in that game, but managed to keep The Shakers out to earn a point thanks to some excellent saves by Josh Lillis.

Two months before that, Darren made his most recent appearance at Spotland for Dale’s 2-0 win over Bristol Rovers, a game in which we played in our white away kit as Rovers turned up with purple and black stripes.

Mr Drysdale, who is in the RAF, is in his tenth season on the referees’ list and you have to go back to October 2004 for his first Dale appointment - a 3-0 home win over Macclesfield.

Twelve months later he was in the middle for our 3-2 victory at Chester in which Matt Gilks was rather fortunate to avoid a red card after his early collision with home striker Greg Blundell.

The full list of Darren’s Dale matches is:

Oct 2004 Macclesfield (h) Won 3-0

Oct 2005 Chester (a) Won 3-2

Nov 2006 Bury (h) Lost 1-3

Jan 2007 Wycombe (a) Drew 1-1

Feb 2008 Peterborough (h) Lost 0-2

Sep 2008 Rotherham (a) Drew 2-2

Feb 2011 Tranmere (a) Drew 1-1

Apr 2011 Brentford (h) Lost 0-1

Oct 2011 Chesterfield (h) Drew 1-1

Mar 2013 York (a) Drew 0-0

Dec 2013 Bristol R (h) Won 2-0

Mar 2014 Bury (a) Drew 0-0

So far this season Darren has refereed 25 games, showing 87 yellow cards and six red. His most recent appointment was Yeovil v Notts County just over a week ago, while on Saturday he was the fourth official at Watford v Birmingham.

Photo: Action Images

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