One of last season’s top-performing Football League officials will take charge of Dale’s first game in League One on Saturday.

West Midlands-based Andy Penn is the man in the middle and last term almost 50% of his matches came at Championship level, suggesting high marks from managers and assessors alike.

Among those games were the local derby between Barnsley and Sheffield Wednesday, while lower down the league Andy refereed crucial end-of-season six-pointers, such as Colchester v Swindon.

He also refereed the first leg of the JPT Northern Final between Leeds and Carlisle and was fourth official at the play-off semi-final between Swindon and Charlton.

However, all these games surely pale into insignificance when you realise that Mr Penn’s last Dale match was our live Sky fixture at Bury in February.

The home side won 1-0 that night, but the game will be sadly remembered for Chris O’Grady’s astonishing miss from almost on the goal-line when the score was 0-0.

Andy showed yellow cards to Dale’s Scott Wiseman and Tom Kennedy that night and altogether in 2009/10, he refereed 34 games, issuing 63 yellow cards and two red.

This is Mr Penn’s ninth season on the league list and he has so far refereed Dale seven times:

11 Mar 2003 Bournemouth (h) drew 1-1

10 Aug 2004 Swansea (h) lost 0-2

5 Mar 2005 Bristol R (a) drew 0-0

10 Sep 2005 Boston (a) lost 2-3

26 Aug 2006 Accrington (a) drew 1-1

23 Aug 2008 Bradford (a) lost 0-2

1 Feb 2010 Bury (a) lost 0-1

As you can see, we are definitely due a win with Andy in charge!

REFWORLD PROFILE: here

Photo: Action Images via Reuters