Cambridgeshire official Kevin Wright is the man in the middle for the enticing home game against York City on Saturday.

We first saw Mr Wright (roccydalekevin?) in October 2003 for a game which ended in a rather unsavoury manner.

On that occasion he was in the first few months of his league refereeing career and had been appointed to Dale’s home fixture with Scunthorpe.

Kevin had dismissed The Iron’s Richard Kell in the first half, but Scunthorpe were doing a good job of hanging on until Leo Bertos broke the deadlock with eight minutes remaining.

Shortly after Dale were awarded a penalty, but Bertos saw his spot-kick saved by Sam Russell.

However, the linesman had spotted an infringement, a re-take was awarded and Ged Brannan smashed it home to clinch a 2-0 win.

Unfortunately this was too much to take for several Scunny followers, who broke through a stewards’ cordon and attempted to climb into the Pearl Street end of the ground.

These were disgraceful scenes, the like of which hadn’t been seen at Spotland since the same group of fans invaded the pitch during an FA Cup tie in 1990!

Since then we have met Mr Wright five more times.

He was the referee at Chester in January 2005 when the home side had two players sent-off — including Paul Carden — but put the remaining nine behind the ball to shut out our attack as the game finished 0-0.

He also refereed a 0-0 draw at Bristol Rovers in September 2006, the 3-1 home defeat of Dagenham in February 2010 and a 2-1 loss at Leyton Orient in October 2010.

Kevin’s last Dale game was at home to AFC Wimbledon in January 2013 in what turned out to be John Coleman’s last home match as manager.

Another abject performance saw Dale lose 1-0, with Joe Rafferty’s red card summing-up a dire afternoon.

So far this season Mr Wright has refereed 20 games, showing 58 yellow cards and six red; all the red cards have come in his last eight appointments.

His most recent match was MK Dons v Wolves last Saturday, while back in October he refereed York’s 2-0 home loss to Fleetwood.

Photo: Action Images

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