Ross Joyce is the man in charge of Dale’s trip to Scunthorpe on Saturday.

The Middlesbrough official refereed three of our games last season, including the early season home fixture versus The Iron which ended 1-1.

Ross was also in the middle for Dale’s 2-0 league defeat at Doncaster at the end of December and the 0-0 midweek home draw with MK Dons in February.

In 2016/17, Mr Joyce refereed another three Dale matches, with two of them ending in a bad way for Niall Canavan.

The Dale defender was sent-off in a 2-2 draw at Bristol Rovers in September and then again as we went down 4-0 at Bradford two months later.

It was perhaps just as well that Canavan wasn’t playing when Ross refereed the home game versus Northampton on 1st April!

Fans will remember that match finishing 1-1 after Northampton equalised with virtually the last kick of the game.

Mr Joyce’s other Dale appointment since he joined the National List in 2015 was our 2-0 defeat at Crewe in February 2016, in which Bradden Inman scored for The Railwaymen.

At 31-years-old, Ross is one of the EFL’s youngest referees, although he did officiate at Conference level for seven seasons before making the step up.

This culminated in him taking charge of the 2014/15 play-off final between Bristol Rovers and Grimsby in front of over 50,000 fans at Wembley.

Before his promotion he had been on the line for several Dale matches, although one — the 3-2 FA Cup loss to FC United — is a game we would rather forget!

Onto this this season and Mr Joyce has refereed six games, showing 17 yellow cards.

Last Saturday he was the fourth official at Peterborough v Doncaster and was involved in the Posh management team of Steve Evans and Paul Raynor receiving red cards.

Evans claimed it was because they had given Ross low marks “for incompetence” in the past, but most sane football fans will probably think differently…

Photo: Action Images

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