Devon referee Brett Huxtable is the man in the middle for Dale’s Good Friday trip to Fratton Park to take on Portsmouth.
Mr Huxtable is in his fifth season on the referees’ list and our three previous meetings with him have all ended in comprehensive defeats for Dale!
In March 2017, Brett was in charge of a midweek game at AFC Wimbledon where Dale lost 3-1 and had Keith Keane sent-off.
Huxtable’s next Dale appointment was at Wycombe in October 2019, where a poor performance saw Keith Hill’s men go down to a 3-0 defeat. Hill and others were annoyed about missed shirt-pulling in the area that denied Dale two clear penalties, although Wycombe had similar claims of their own that went unmentioned.
More recently, Brett was in the middle at Peterborough in December when all the goals came in the first half in Dale’s 4-1 thrashing.
Being based in North Devon means that most of his games are a bit of a trek for Mr Huxtable, so Portsmouth is probably one of his shorter trips.
It is certainly shorter than a couple of his recent appointments that have taken him to Crewe v Accrington and Oldham v Cambridge!
They are two of Brett’s 26 matches in 2020/21, those games yielding 87 yellow cards and four reds.