Referee Graham Horwood is in charge of Dale’s trip to Port Vale on Saturday.

This is the first time we have met the Bedfordshire official since the 2-1 defeat at Torquay in March, while last December he was the referee for Dale’s 1-1 draw at Southend.

Mr Horwood was promoted to the Football League in 2007, but served only three seasons before dropping back down to Conference level.

After two more years he had performed sufficiently well to be promoted again and Dale will be hoping for a similar result to one of our previous games with him in the middle.

That was back in our 2009/10 promotion campaign when Graham refereed the magnificent 4-1 win at Cheltenham in which Chris O’Grady scored a hat-trick.

In his first season on the league list, 2007/08, we met Mr Horwood twice.

He was in charge of an early season 1-1 draw at Hereford, but angered Dale fans by awarding the home side a penalty and sending-off David Perkins.

Three months later, he was the referee for our FA Cup first round tie against Southend at Roots Hall, in which another penalty went against Dale in a 2-1 defeat.

We also saw Graham at Swindon in February 2011 where he oversaw a 1-1 draw after Craig Dawson had given Dale a late lead.

So far this term, Graham has refereed nine matches, showing 35 yellow cards and one red.

His last appointment was Southend v Chester in the FA Cup last weekend.

Photo: Action Images

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