Marc Edwards will make the trip down from County Durham to referee Dale’s League Two fixture at Port Vale on Saturday.
Currently in his third season on the National List, Marc has only refereed two previous Dale games, both ending in defeat.
In November 2019, he was in the middle when we faced Coventry at St Andrew’s, a match the ‘home’ side won 2-1.
More recently, Mr Edwards was at Spotland in February for the dire 2-0 home loss to Burton Albion, in which Dale also had Ollie Rathbone sent-off for an ill-advised headbutt on an opponent!
Marc was promoted to the National List for 2019/20 after a couple of seasons refereeing in the National League.
His first EFL appointment was Cambridge v Newport and despite being based in the North-East, he has been sent on some other quite long journeys, with games at Peterborough, Shrewsbury, Northampton and Ipswich since the turn of the year.
Last season, the Durham whistler refereed 32 matches and showed exactly 100 yellow cards, but he has only been out three times this term, most recently on Tuesday at Wigan v Wolves U21 in the Papa John’s Trophy.
One further piece of information, Marc’s wife is Helen Edwards (nee Byrne), one of the female assistant referees on the National List who has officiated at several Dale games in recent seasons.