It would appear that finally we have a football match to look forward to, and so TVOS gets to work on profiling match referee Kevin Wright.
Saturday’s referee hasn’t visited Spotland for over six years, although his only game here was one which ended in a rather unsavoury manner.
Cambridgeshire-based Kevin Wright will set off at the crack of dawn to get to Spotland, coming here for the first time since October 2003.
On that occasion he was in the first few months of his league refereeing career and had been appointed to Dale’s home fixture with Scunthorpe.
Mr Wright 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 WMG end.
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 just twice more, but both games have finished goalless.
The first 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.
He also refereed the 0-0 draw at Bristol Rovers in September 2006, which was our last visit to the Memorial Stadium.
Mr Wright will be getting used to this area as he refereed Oldham v Walsall last Saturday, while on Wednesday night he was the man who sent Lee Hughes off for two yellow cards in Notts County's 1-1 draw with Grimsby Town.
REFWORLD PROFILE:http://www.refworld.com/referee/2446/1
5 famous Kevins
One famous Wright