A 400-mile round trip for the faithful on Saturday and a little bit of history to mark the occasion as it’s the first time to my knowledge we have had a lady referee.
Rebecca Welch will be taking control of the game, with Kevin Mulraine and David Avent assisting on the flags, and Martin Coy as the 4th Official.
This will be ref Welch’s biggest game so far in her refereeing career, last season reffing just one EFL game. This season she has been in charge on 7 occasions, 1 FA Cup tie, 2 in the EFL Trophy, and 4 in League 2. In that time, she has booked 21 players, with no yellow/red card offences, no straight red offences, and no penalties awarded.
With no previous history to look back on for our allocated referee we look back at the last time we played Morecambe. It was the 12th of March 2019, and those that made the trip will recall it was an extremely windy day, possibly too windy as it was almost impossible to pass the ball, and on one occasion a large chunk of the roof came off one of the stands.
We lost 4-2 in front of just 1,460 fans and it was a blow at the time (no pun intended) to our League 2 promotion hopes. We were sitting 4th in the table with 10 games left in the season, Morecambe meanwhile were in 22nd place looking over their shoulders staring at relegation. After an hour we were 3-0 down and looking out of it until Kieran Agard came on and scored two goals in 6 minutes. With minutes left and us pressing to level the scores we got caught on the break and conceded again making it a miserable journey home.
Photo Credit – soccatips.com
