Shrewsbury referee Rob Lewis is the man in the middle for Dale’s home game versus Peterborough on Saturday.
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 games 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 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 appointment was in January 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.
So far this season, Rob has refereed 11 games, showing 29 yellow cards and one red. His most recent match was Grimsby v Carlisle last weekend.