Select Group 2 referee Geoff Eltringham is the man in the middle for Dale’s Carabao Cup third round tie at Burnley on Tuesday.

The County Durham official has been a member of SG2 since its inception in 2016/17 and has taken charge of 138 Championship matches in that time, the most recent being Sheffield United v Preston last Tuesday.

Before joining the SG2 list, Geoff had been a regular at Dale’s games for the previous seven seasons.

His first Dale appointment was for a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy tie at home to Bradford in September 2009, which The Bantams won 2-1. Dale fans may recall Craig Dawson scored his first goal for the club that night.

Just short of 12 months later, Mr Eltringham was in the middle for the Carling Cup tie at Barnsley, where Anthony Elding’s goal gave Dale a 1-0 win.

Three months after that he was at Spotland for the visit of FC United in the FA Cup, which ended in controversy when the non-league side’s winner in their 3-2 victory was clearly kicked out of the grasp of Dale ‘keeper Josh Lillis.

Geoff’s most recent Dale appointment was at Spotland in January 2019 for a 1-1 home draw with Fleetwood.

The full record of his Dale games is:

Sep 09 Bradford (h, JPT), L 1-2
Aug 10 Barnsley (a, CC), W 1-0
Nov 10 FC United (h, FAC), L 2-3
Sep 11 Scunthorpe (h), W 1-0
Apr 13 Plymouth (h), W 1-0
Feb 14 Morecambe (h), W 2-1
Aug 14 Peterborough (h), L 0-1
Sep 15 Fleetwood (a), D 1-1
Apr 18 Bury (a), W 2-0
Jan 19 Fleetwood (h), D 1-1

So far this season, Eltringham has refereed seven matches, all of them in the Championship, showing 33 yellow cards and one red card. The high yellow card count was boosted by TEN in the Bristol City v Swansea fixture!

Photo: Action Images

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