Dale’s first National League fixture of 2026 at Gateshead on Saturday will be refereed by ROSS JOYCE.

The Cleveland official was a regular at our matches in the EFL, but Saturday will be his first Dale appointment in the National League since the separate lists of officials were consolidated into one.

The first of Ross’s 17 previous Dale appointments came at Crewe in February 2016, where Keith Hill’s men went down to a 2-0 defeat, before he refereed us twice in the early months of the following campaign.

In September 2016, he was in the middle at Bristol Rovers, where Dale picked-up a point from a 2-2 draw after playing 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 Covid-19 pandemic.

His most recent Dale appointment was a 1-0 home defeat to Carlisle United just shy of three years ago.

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
Apr 22 Bristol R (h), L 3-4
Jan 23 Carlisle (h), L0-1

So far this this season, Ross has refereed 21 games across League One, League Two and the cups, in addition to Forest Green v Scunthorpe in the National League.

He has shown 65 yellow cards in those games and his last match was Mansfield v Bradford in League One on New Year’s Day.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters