Cheshire official Mark Heywood will referee Dale’s first game in this season’s Checkatrade Trophy when we travel to the Energy Check Stadium at Gigg Lane on Tuesday.

We last saw Mr Heywood a year ago when he was in charge of Dale’s 2-1 home win over Fleetwood, which was our first league victory of the 2016/17 campaign.

Earlier in 2016 he was in the middle at Spotland for the 2-0 defeat of Sheffield United, a game in which Dale somehow came away with the points despite being outplayed for most of the 90 minutes.

Mark’s previous league appointment involving Dale before that was the 3-0 win at Northampton in March 2014 as we continued on our way to promotion.

The only blot on our copybook that night was when Matty Lund received a second yellow card and subsequent red for celebrating with the fans after scoring a fine diving header.

Later that year Mr Heywood refereed a 1-0 home loss to Walsall in the JPT, while in November 2012 he was at Spotland for the dreadful 1-0 defeat by Morecambe in an FA Cup first round replay.

The full list of Dale games refereed by Mark is:

Jul 09 Manchester U (h, F), L 0-2

Oct 11 Wycombe (h), W 2-1

Jul 12 Radcliffe (a, F), L 1-2

Nov 12 Morecambe (h, FAC), L 0-1

Mar 14 Northampton (a), W 3-0

Oct 14 Walsall (h, JPT), L 0-1

Feb 16 Sheffield U (h), W 2-0

Sep 16 Fleetwood (h), W 2-1

So far this season Mr Heywood has refereed five games, showing 16 yellow cards and one red.

One of his appointments was Bury’s opening day fixture versus Walsall at the Energy Check Stadium at Gigg Lane.

Photo: Action Images

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