Richard Clark is the man in the middle for Dale’s home game versus Shrewsbury Town on Friday night.
This will be our second meeting with the Northumberland official in two months as he was also the referee for Dale’s 2-0 defeat at Coventry in October.
Now in his fifth season on the league list, Dale will always provide Mr Clark with good memories as his debut match at this level was our 1-1 draw at Chesterfield in August 2012.
We then saw him again later in the campaign when he refereed the exciting 2-2 home draw with promotion-bound Port Vale.
In 2013/14, Richard officiated at Dale’s 2-1 home loss to Fleetwood, while in 2014/15 he took charge of the FA Cup replay defeat of Northampton and the 2-1 midweek win at Notts County.
He was also due to referee our game at Bradford in February, but had to withdraw through injury.
Those injury problems actually meant Clark’s final game of last season was on 5th March and he didn’t return until early October this term with the Checkatrade Trophy tie between Carlisle and Blackburn U23.