Referee Darren England will make the short trip from Barnsley to take charge of Dale’s Carabao Cup tie at Grimsby on Tuesday.
The official is in his fourth season on the referees’ list and his second as one of the Select Group 2 referees who mainly oversee games in the Championship.
He was busy in that league last term, refereeing 29 Championship fixtures, as well as Exeter v Lincoln in the League Two play-offs.
Darren has also refereed in the Championship already this season, with his appointment at Preston v QPR on the opening day and Nottingham Forest v WBA last Tuesday.
This will be the fifth time Mr England has been appointed to a Dale match since his promotion to the league list.
In July 2015 he was in the middle for a pre-season friendly defeat at Accrington, while the following November, Darren was at the Crown Oil Arena for Dale’s 2-1 defeat of Port Vale.
He returned in October 2016 for our comfortable 3-0 win over Southend and was then back a week later as the fourth official for the equally comfortable 2-0 defeat of Bury!
Mr England’s most recent Dale match was in March 2017 when we drew 3-3 at home to Millwall in a rearranged midweek fixture.
Up to his promotion to the referees’ list, Darren was an assistant referee (linesman) at the highest level of the game, with weekly appointments in the Premier League and regular jaunts around Europe to ‘line’ at Champions League matches and international fixtures.
His lining career finished in May 2015 when he achieved the most prestigious domestic appointment as one of referee Jon Moss’s assistants for the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Aston Villa.