Referee Darren Sheldrake will hope for better weather when Dale travel to Leyton Orient on Saturday.

The last time he took charge of one of our matches was at Bristol Rovers in March 2013 when the game was in doubt right up to kick-off due to heavy overnight and morning rain at the Memorial Stadium.

Mr Sheldrake eventually passed the pitch fit, although Dale were left wishing for a postponement after losing 2-1.

Prior to that, our only other match with Darren as the referee was early in the 2009/10 promotion season.

The Surrey-based official refereed Dale’s 2-1 win at Northampton in which Will Buckley scored a spectacular goal from outside the area.

A PE teacher at Teddington School in Middlesex, Mr Sheldrake is in his sixth campaign on the league list and generally referees in League One and League Two, with occasional Championship fixtures thrown in.

One of those was last weekend when he was the man in the middle at Norwich v Birmingham.

Including that match, Darren has refereed five games this season, showing 13 yellow cards and three red.

Photo: Action Images

D_Dale added 10:14 - Sep 27 After last Saturday's match a Norwich supporter posted the following on the "Rate the Ref." forum: "Very poor. One of the worst performances at Carrow Road for a number of seasons. Failed to give a nailed on penalty to Birmingham after 10 mins, when Martin brought down Donaldson. Probably then realised his error and then to make things worse failed to give Norwich a penalty for a clear handball. 2 wrongs doesn't make a right. Then started dishing YC for very soft offences, without even trying to talk to players. Then the worst tackle of the match by Jerome wasn't carded. By the end of the match he seemed to have lost any confidence he had, the ball went out in his corner, and he hoped/expected the AR on the far side to give it from 70 yards away! Timewasting, he decided to start clamping down and encouraging the keeper with 2 minutes to go. Shame about the 30 minutes before."

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