Kevin Wright is the man in the middle for Dale’s midweek fixture against Gillingham.

This will be Mr Wright’s tenth Dale appointment, with the first coming at Spotland back in October 2003.

On that occasion he was in the first few months of his league refereeing career and had been appointed to Dale’s game against Scunthorpe.

Kevin had dismissed The Iron’s Richard Kell in the first half, but Scunthorpe were doing a good job of hanging on until Leo Bertos broke the deadlock with eight minutes remaining.

Shortly after Dale were awarded a penalty, but Bertos saw his spot-kick saved by Sam Russell.

However, the linesman had spotted an infringement, a re-take was awarded and Ged Brannan smashed it home to clinch a 2-0 win.

Unfortunately this was too much to take for several Scunny followers, who broke through a stewards’ cordon and attempted to climb into the Pearl Street end of the ground.

These were disgraceful scenes, the like of which hadn’t been seen at Spotland since the same group of fans invaded the pitch during an FA Cup tie in 1990!

Since then we have met Mr Wright eight more times.

One of the most notable appointments was at Chester in January 2005 when the home side had two players sent-off — including Paul Carden — but put the remaining nine behind the ball to shut out our attack as the game finished 0-0.

He also refereed the 3-1 home defeat of Dagenham in February 2010, when two late goals consolidated Dale’s position at the top of League Two, as well as John Coleman’s final home match as manager when AFC Wimbledon won 1-0 at Spotland.

Kevin’s most recent Dale appointment was in November when we 2-0 at Doncaster.

Mr Wright’s full list of Dale games is:

Oct 03 Rochdale v Scunthorpe W 2-0

Jan 05 Chester v Rochdale D 0-0

Sep 06 Bristol R v Rochdale D 0-0

Feb 10 Rochdale v Dagenham W 3-1

Oct 10 Leyton Orient v Rochdale L 1-2

Jan 13 Rochdale v AFC Wimbledon L 0-1

Apr 14 Rochdale v York D 0-0

Oct 14 Rochdale v Barnsley L 0-1

Nov 15 Doncaster v Rochdale W 2-0

So far this season Kevin has refereed 33 games, showing 101 yellow cards and five red.

His most recent match was Plymouth v AFC Wimbledon in League Two just over a week ago.

Photo: Action Images

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