Referee Darren England will make the trip across from Barnsley to take charge of Tuesday’s home game against Millwall.

The official is in his second season on the referees’ list and this will be the fourth time we have seen him at a Dale game in that time.

In July 2015 he was in the middle for a pre-season friendly defeat at Accrington, while the following November, Darren was at the Crown Oil Arena for Dale’s 2-1 defeat of Port Vale.

He returned to the Crown Oil Arena in October for our comfortable 3-0 win over Southend and was then back a week later as the fourth official for the equally comfortable 2-0 defeat of Bury!

Since his appointment to the league list, Mr England has mainly refereed in League One and League Two, but he was recently elevated to the Select Group 2 list of match officials.

He took charge of his first game at that level at the start of this month when refereeing QPR v Cardiff.

Up to his promotion to the referees’ list, Darren was an assistant referee (linesman) at the highest level of the game, with weekly appointments in the Premier League and regular jaunts around Europe to ‘line’ at Champions League matches and international fixtures.

His lining career finished in May 2015 when he achieved the most prestigious domestic appointment as one of referee Jonathon Moss’s assistants for the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Aston Villa.

Coming back to this season and before last week, Darren had refereed 34 games, showing 91 yellow cards and seven red.

Photo: Action Images

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