Ross Joyce is the man in charge of Dale’s League One encounter with Lincoln City on Tuesday.

This will be the first time we have seen the Middlesbrough official this season, but he refereed three Dale matches last term, another three in 2017/18 and three in 2016/17.

Ross’s most recent Dale appointment was in January when he was at the Crown Oil Arena for the 4-2 loss to Manchester City U21 in the Checkatrade Trophy.

Earlier in the campaign he had overseen our 2-0 win at Fleetwood in the same competition and the 3-3 league draw at Scunthorpe.

Two of his Joyce’s three Dale appointments in 2016/17 ended 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!

His full list of Dale appointments is:

Feb 16 Crewe (a), L 0-2
Sep 16 Bristol R (a), D 2-2
Nov 16 Bradford (a), L 0-4
Apr 17 Northampton (h), D 1-1
Aug 17 Scunthorpe (h), D 1-1
Dec 17 Doncaster (a), L 0-2
Feb 18 MK Dons (h), D 0-0
Sep 18 Scunthorpe (a), D 3-3
Oct 18 Fleetwood T (a, CT), W 2-0
Jan 19 Man City U21 (h, CT), L 2-4

At 33-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.

And talking of Wembley, Mr Joyce finished last season with games there on consecutive weekends in May.

One Saturday he refereed the FA Vase Final between Chertsey Town and Cray Valley, before returning eight days later for Newport v Tranmere in the League Two play-off final.

Onto this this season and before Saturday, when he was fourth official at Preston v Brentford, Ross had refereed six games, showing 28 yellow cards and one red.

His most recent game in the middle was Accrington v MK Dons at the end of August.

Photo: Action Images

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