Friday’s referee at Southend, Graham Horwood, is in his first season of his second spell on the league list.
The Bedfordshire official was promoted to the Football League in 2007, but served only three seasons before dropping back down to Conference level.
After two more years he had performed sufficiently well to be promoted again and Dale will be hoping for a similar result to our last game with him in the middle.
That was back in our 2009/10 promotion campaign when Graham refereed the magnificent 4-1 win at Cheltenham in which Chris O’Grady scored a hat-trick.
In his first season on the league list, 2007/08, we met Mr Horwood twice.
He was in charge of an early season 1-1 draw at Hereford, but angered Dale fans by awarding the home side a penalty and sending-off David Perkins.
Three months later, he was the referee for our FA Cup first round tie against Friday’s opponents at Roots Hall, in which another penalty went against Dale in a 2-1 defeat.
So far this term, Graham has refereed 12 matches, showing 55 yellow cards and one red.
His most recent appointment was last Saturday when he refereed Burton v York in League Two.