Shrewsbury referee Rob Lewis is the man in the middle for Dale’s game at Walsall on Tuesday.

Mr Lewis gained his first experience of refereeing at Football League level in October 2005 when he took charge of Dale’s 2-1 home defeat of Rushden & Diamonds.

This was a trial game to assess his suitability for promotion and he went on to referee several other League Two fixtures that season, including another match at Spotland the following April in which Dale lost 2-0 to Darlington.

Mr Lewis was promoted to the league list for real during the summer of 2006 and he again appeared at Spotland in the following April for the 0-0 draw with Swindon.

Rob suffered from injury problems in 2007/08, but refereed at Spotland on New Year’s Day when Darlington were beaten 3-1 and had Alan White sent-off for good measure and general hilarity!

Those injuries and poor marks saw Mr Lewis drop off the league list for the next two seasons, but he was promoted again in 2010 and is now in his eighth year back at this level.

His first Dale game after promotion was the 0-0 draw at Cheltenham in January 2013 which marked Keith Hill’s return to the club.

Twelve months later Rob was in the middle as we won 3-0 at Hartlepool, while his most recent Dale game was in January 2017 when we lost 2-1 at Southend.

In that match, Dale had Keith Keane sent-off in the 22nd minute for bringing down a Southend player who was clean through on goal, but ten minutes later The Shrimpers had Jermaine McGlashan dismissed to also reduce them to ten men.

Mr Lewis was due at the Crown Oil Arena at the end of November for Dale’s match versus Peterborough, only for him to be replaced due to further injury worries.

However, he was back in action a week later and so far this season he has refereed 23 games, showing 65 yellow cards and three red. His most recent match was Accrington v Cambridge last weekend.

Photo: Action Images

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