Tom Nield is the man in the middle for Dale’s game at Walsall on Saturday.
The Barnsley official was due to referee our match at Colchester at the end of September, but Charles Breakspear took the game instead.
This is his sixth season on the National List, although Saturday will be only his fifth Dale game.
Last season, Tom refereed both of our fixtures against Hartlepool, the first of which ended in a 2-1 defeat in the North-East in December and the second seeing Dale win 2-1 at home on Easter Monday thanks to Eoghan O’Connell’s remarkable injury time goal.
In the 2019/20 campaign, Mr Nield’s only other Dale games were our home and away fixtures against Accrington Stanley, both matches seeing Brian Barry-Murphy’s men pick up 2-1 victories.
History therefore tells us that 2-1 could be a good score to bet on at the weekend!
Tom was also appointed to Dale’s home fixture against Bristol Rovers in October 2017, but he was forced to withdraw a couple of days in advance, presumably through injury.
Saturday will be Mr Nield’s 12th match of the season, with 23 yellow cards having been shown in the previous eleven. His most recent game was Exeter City v Fleetwood Town last Saturday.
One final interesting piece of information about Tom is when he made the headlines in the Spring of 2020 when the first lockdown took place, due to his work with the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/11970748/tom-nield-the-efl-referee