Marc Edwards will make the trip across from County Durham to referee Dale’s League Two fixture at Carlisle on Tuesday.

Currently in his third season on the National List, Marc has only refereed three previous Dale games, two ending in defeat, but the most recent in an impressive victory.

That was earlier this season at Port Vale, where two Jake Beesley headers and a Corey O’Keeffe effort helped Dale to a fine 3-2 win.

In November 2019, Marc was in the middle when we faced Coventry at St Andrew’s, a match the ‘home’ side won 2-1.

At this time last year, Mr Edwards was at Spotland for the dire 2-0 home loss to Burton Albion, in which Dale also had Ollie Rathbone sent-off for an ill-advised headbutt on an opponent!

Marc was promoted to the National List for 2019/20 after a couple of seasons refereeing in the National League.

His first EFL appointment was Cambridge v Newport and despite being based in the North-East, Marc has been sent on some quite long journeys since joining the list, with games at Peterborough, Shrewsbury, Northampton, Ipswich and MK Dons scattered among the more regulation northern appointments.

His last game was due to be Salford v Crawley on 19th February, but that was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. Up to that point, Mr Edwards had refereed 19 games this season, showing 62 yellow cards and one red.

One further piece of information, Marc’s wife is Helen Edwards (nee Byrne), one of the female assistant referees on the National List, who has officiated at several Dale games, but who was also the subject of comments from Barrow manager Mark Cooper which has seen him hit with an eight-match touchline ban.

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