Saturday’s referee is affectionately known as ‘the schoolboy’ among his colleagues due to his cherubic face and extremely young looks.
In fact Surrey’s Gavin Ward is 31-years-old and in his fourth season on the league list.
Dale have met him just twice before, most recently at Barnet in March 2009 when we lost the game 2-1 and had Chris Dagnall shown a straight red card for a bad tackle.
Gavin also refereed Dale at Wycombe in January 2008 when he spotted a late foul on Ben Muirhead and awarded a penalty which Tom Kennedy converted for the only goal of the game.
This season Mr Ward has refereed 32 matches, showing 94 yellow cards and three red.
He was most recently at Middlesbrough v Coventry on Easter Monday, while his last League One fixture was Sheffield Wednesday v Hartlepool three weeks ago.
Gavin’s last Bournemouth game was back in November when The Cherries defeated Walsall 3-0 at Dean Court.
REFWORLD PROFILE: http://refworld.com/referee/170/1
As an aside, a big thanks to TVOS for diligently producing these Refwatches for every game this season, even when I don't always remember to stick them online. It always makes such a difference to find out that bit more about the man in the middle that we spend ninety minutes abusing.