Shrewsbury referee Rob Lewis is the man in the middle for Dale’s trip to Southend on Saturday.
Mr Lewis gained his first experience of refereeing at Football League level in October 2005 when he took charge of Dale’s 2-1 home defeat of Rushden & Diamonds.
This was a trial game to assess his suitability for promotion and he went on to referee several other League Two games that season, including another match at Spotland the following April in which Dale lost 2-0 to Darlington.
The following campaign saw Mr Lewis promoted to the league list for real and he again appeared at Spotland in April for the 0-0 draw with Swindon.
Rob suffered from injury problems in 2007/08, but refereed at Spotland on New Year’s Day when Darlington were beaten 3-1 and had Alan White sent-off for good measure.
Those injuries and poor marks saw Mr Lewis drop off the league list for the next two seasons, but he was promoted again in 2010 and is now in his seventh year back at this level.
We haven’t seen Rob since January 2014 when he was in the middle for Dale’s 3-0 win at Hartlepool.
A year earlier, he refereed the 0-0 draw at Cheltenham which marked Keith Hill’s return to the club and was famous for the heavy snow that fell in the north to make the journey home extremely challenging for the travelling fans.
So far this season, Rob has refereed six games, showing 19 yellow cards. His most recent match was Stevenage v Newport last weekend.