Ross Joyce is the man in charge of Dale’s final home game of the season against Bristol Rovers on Saturday.

This will be the second time the Cleveland official has been at Spotland this season as he was the man in the middle when Dale hosted Notts County in the FA Cup in November.

Ross has also refereed this fixture before, although that was at Rovers’ Memorial Stadium in September 2016.

On that occasion, the teams shared a 2-2 draw, which was a good result for Dale after they had played much of the match with ten men after the sending-off of Niall Canavan.

Two months later, Canavan was again dismissed by Mr Joyce in a 4-0 thrashing at Bradford.

Ross was also the referee in March 2020 when Dale defeated Rotherham 3-1 at home in their final game before football shut down due to the pandemic.

All told, Mr Joyce has refereed 16 previous Dale games, starting with an away match in February 2016 against Crewe.

Alex were 2-0 winners that afternoon, with future Dale player Bradden Inman netting one of their goals.

Mr Joyce’s 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
Sep 19 Lincoln (h), D 1-1
Mar 20 Rotherham (h), W 3-1
Jan 21 Oxford (h), L 3-4
Mar 21 Sunderland (a), L 0-2
Jul 21 Luton (a, F), L 0-4
Nov 21 Notts Co (h, FAC), D 1-1

Ross joined the National List in time for the 2015/16 campaign. He had officiated at Conference level for seven seasons, a period which 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.

Onto this this season, where Mr Joyce has refereed 34 games, showing 101 yellow cards and six reds. He refereed Bradford v Scunthorpe last Saturday and was fourth official at Sunderland v Rotherham on Tuesday.

Photo: Action Images

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