The Man in charge of our game at Don Valley against Dagenham and Redbridge is . . .
A Bates from Staffordshire
Tony Bates has been a qualified referee since 1993 and joined the National List of Referees in 1996 which makes him one of the longest serving officials. He was Assistant Referee in the 1995 Charity Shield and the following year ran the line for the FA Cup Final. In 2007 he was the referee for the FA Womens’ Cup Final.
This will be Tony’s second visit to Don Valley, the first was in October last year in our game with Darlington. The visitors took all three points with Ricky Ravenhill scoring the only goal of the game.
The season before that he was in charge of our game at Chester City when an early goal by Chris O’Grady gave the Millers the win. That day, Tony booked Danny Harrison and Dale Tonge from Rotherham and a certain Kevin Ellison, James Vaughan, Paul Linwood and John Welsh from City.
In the sixteen games Tony has been in charge of this season he has not given out any red cards but has shown yellow cards to forty-two players.
The men with the flags are
DP Plowright from Nottinghamshire
and
W Porter from Lincolnshire
The Fourth Official is
CN Harwood from Manchester
