Seb Stockbridge travels down from Tyne & Wear to take charge of Dale’s rearranged home game with Mansfield on Tuesday.

This will be the third time Seb has refereed Dale this term, with him also having officiated our 2-2 pre-season draw at home to Rotherham and the 0-0 draw at Salford in October.

Last season we saw Mr Stockbridge three times, including both home and away fixtures versus Doncaster!

Now is in his ninth season on the National List, Tuesday is Seb’s 15th Dale game at this level.

His second Football League appointment was Dale’s match at Burton in August 2013, in which Peter Cavanagh being sent-off early in the game, before Dale slumped to a 1-0 defeat courtesy of Olly Lancashire’s own goal.

Twelve months later Seb refereed our 3-3 friendly draw at Bury, while early in 2015/16, he was in charge at the Crown Oil Arena for the visit of Shrewsbury, a game in which Dale raced into a 3-0 lead, before being pegged-back to 3-2 before half-time. Thankfully, there was no further scoring.

We then saw Seb four times in 2017, starting with the first match of the year at Walsall, which ended in a 2-0 victory thanks to goals from Ian Henderson and Joe Thompson.

Two months later he was at Spotland for the thrilling 3-3 draw with Sheffield United and after another month he returned for Dale’s 3-0 midweek defeat of Port Vale as a late replacement for Ben Toner.

Towards the end of 2017, Mr Stockbridge was back at the Crown Oil Arena when Dale entertained Blackburn in the Checkatrade Trophy, a game which ended 1-1 before Keith Hill’s men won on penalties.

In 2018/19 Seb oversaw our FA Cup replay defeat to Portsmouth, while 11 months later, Seb was again at the Crown Oil Arena in FA Cup action as Dale took on Wrexham, although this time we won 1-0 in the first-round replay.

In summary, the full record of Seb’s Dale games is:

Aug 2013 Burton (a), L 0-1
Aug 2014 Bury (a, F), D 3-3
Sep 2015 Shrewsbury (h), W 3-2
Jan 2017 Walsall (a), W 1-0
Mar 2017 Sheffield U (h), D 3-3
Apr 2017 Port Vale (h), W 3-0
Nov 2017 Blackburn (h, Checkatrade), D 1-1 [Dale won on pens]
Dec 2018 Portsmouth (h, FAC), L 0-1
Nov 2019 Wrexham (h, FAC), W 1-0
Sep 2020 Sheffield W (h, CC), L 0-2
Jan 2021 Doncaster (a), L 0-1
May 2021 Doncaster (h), L 1-2
Jul 2021 Rotherham (h, F), D 2-2
Oct 2021 Salford (a), D 0-0

Mr Stockbridge’s life on the National List has been fairly uneventful, but he received some excellent news last week when he learned he had been appointed to referee Rotherham v Sutton in the Papa John’s Trophy Final at Wembley.

Before the weekend, when he was due at Oldham v Exeter, Seb had overseen 28 matches this season, showing 80 yellow cards and four reds.

Photo: Action Images

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