Ross Joyce is the man in charge of Dale’s Checkatrade Trophy tie at home to Manchester City U21 on Tuesday.
This will be the third time we have seen the Middlesbrough official this season, as he refereed Dale’s 3-3 draw at Scunthorpe in early-September and the Checkatrade Trophy group stage win at Fleetwood a month later.
Mr Joyce also oversaw three Dale games last season, starting with the 1-1 home draw with Scunthorpe on the second weekend of the campaign.
Ross was then in the middle for Dale’s 2-0 league defeat at Doncaster at the end of December and the 0-0 midweek home draw with MK Dons in February.
In 2016/17, he refereed another three Dale matches, with two of them ending in a bad way for Niall Canavan.
The Dale defender was sent-off in a 2-2 draw at Bristol Rovers in September and then again as we went down 4-0 at Bradford two months later.
It was perhaps just as well that Canavan wasn’t playing when Ross refereed the home game versus Northampton on 1st April!
Fans will remember that match finishing 1-1 after Northampton equalised with virtually the last kick of the game.
Mr Joyce’s other Dale appointment since he joined the National List in 2015 was our 2-0 defeat at Crewe in February 2016, in which Bradden Inman scored for The Railwaymen.
At 32-years-old, Ross is one of the EFL’s youngest referees, although he did officiate at Conference level for seven seasons before making the step up.
This culminated in him taking charge of the 2014/15 play-off final between Bristol Rovers and Grimsby in front of over 50,000 fans at Wembley.
Before his promotion he had been on the line for several Dale matches, although one — the 3-2 FA Cup loss to FC United — is a game we would rather forget!
Onto this this season and before Saturday, when he was due to take charge of Fleetwood v AFC Wimbledon in the FA Cup, Mr Joyce had refereed 28 games, showing 102 yellow cards and three red.
Among those games have been two recent Championship appointments — Rotherham v Reading and Wigan v Birmingham — as Ross is considered for promotion to the SG2 list of match officials.