Cumbrian referee Anthony Backhouse will oversee Dale’s game at Blackpool on Tuesday.
The Workington official is in his fourth season on the National List and this will be his eighth Dale appointment, although one of those games never took place!
We first saw him on New Year’s Day 2018 when he refereed the 2-1 home loss to Tuesday’s opponents Blackpool, which turned into a thoroughly miserable affair played in pouring rain on an increasingly flooded pitch!
Anthony then returned to the Crown Oil Arena on the second weekend of 2018/19 for our 4-1 loss to Peterborough.
He was the fourth official in early January 2019 at the 4-0 home defeat by Burton and two months later Mr Backhouse took charge of the 0-0 midweek home draw with Oxford, which was Brian Barry-Murphy’s second game as Dale caretaker-manager.
Last season we saw Anthony at the 3-2 win at Tranmere on the campaign’s opening day and he was also due to referee the return fixture with Rovers in March, only for it to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
More recently, the Cumbrian whistler was the fourth official at Dale’s 2-0 home loss to Charlton.
Anthony joined the National List in 2017 after receiving the ultimate accolade in non-league football when he refereed Forest Green v Tranmere in the 2016/17 National League play-off final at Wembley.
He has since been in charge of a large number of matches in League One and League Two, although just before Christmas 2019, Backhouse was appointed to Hull v Birmingham in the Championship as a trial game to test his suitability for potential promotion to the Select Group 2 list.
Anthony’s last game was Accrington v Plymouth a week ago, after which he had officiated 20 matches this term, showing 71 yellow cards and two reds.