Select Group 2 referee Geoff Eltringham is the man in the middle for Dale’s home game against Fleetwood on Saturday.
The County Durham official was a regular at our games for seven seasons up to the start of 2016/17, when he was promoted to the new group of referees who mainly officiate in the Championship.
This is one of the reasons why we haven’t seen Geoff at a Dale home match since February 2014 when he was in charge of our 2-1 defeat of Morecambe.
We have seen him on the road, though, most recently at Bury last April when Geoff presided over Dale’s comfortable 2-0 defeat of the relegation-bound Shakers.
Eltringham also refereed a previous game versus Fleetwood when we drew 1-1 at Highbury in September 2015, although Ian Henderson missed an injury-time penalty to deny Dale all three points.
Saturday will be Geoff’s tenth Dale appointment since he joined the National List in 2009, one of which was the controversial FA Cup home loss to FC United.
The full record of his Dale games is:
Sep 09 Bradford (h, JPT), L 1-2
Aug 10 Barnsley (a, CC), W 1-0
Nov 10 FC United (h, FAC), L 2-3
Sep 11 Scunthorpe (h), W 1-0
Apr 13 Plymouth (h), W 1-0
Feb 14 Morecambe (h), W 2-1
Aug 14 Peterborough (h), L 0-1
Sep 15 Fleetwood (a), D 1-1
Apr 18 Bury (a), W 2-0
Before Tuesday, when he was due to take charge of Stoke v Shrewsbury in the FA Cup, Geoff had refereed 22 matches this term, showing 73 yellow cards and three red.
He refereed Hull v Sheffield Wednesday last Saturday and the big Championship fixture between Sheffield United and Derby on Boxing Day.