Cumbrian referee Anthony Backhouse will oversee Dale’s final Papa John’s Trophy group game at home to Salford City on Tuesday.

The Carlisle official is in his sixth season on the National List and this will be his tenth Dale appointment, although one of those games never took place!

We first saw Mr Backhouse on New Year’s Day 2018 when he refereed the 2-1 home loss to Blackpool, which turned into a thoroughly miserable affair played in pouring rain on an increasingly flooded pitch!

Anthony then returned to the Crown Oil Arena on the second weekend of 2018/19 for our 4-1 loss to Peterborough.

He was the fourth official in early January 2019 at the 4-0 home defeat by Burton and two months later, Mr Backhouse took charge of the 0-0 midweek home draw with Oxford, which was Brian Barry-Murphy’s second game as Dale caretaker-manager.

In 2019/20 we saw Anthony at the 3-2 win at Tranmere on the campaign’s opening day and he was also due to referee the return fixture with Rovers in March, only for it to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

More recently, the Cumbrian whistler was the fourth official at Dale’s 2-0 home loss to Charlton in February 2021, before refereeing our 1-0 defeat at Blackpool ten days later.

Last November, he was back at the Crown Oil Arena for the 2-2 draw with Leyton Orient.

Photo: Action Images

Dalenet added 09:05 - Oct 17 Reading that, we are due a win under him now. That initial Blackpool game he refereed was miserably wet. Our pitch looked like Gigg Lane that day
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