By WhistleBlower
Our allocated ref on Tuesday Mr Dean Whitestone was replaced late on by Andy Woolmer, for what reason we do not know, but at least Mr Woolmer had a short trip from Northants. Not much to complain about with our replacement ref, controlled it well although could have been harder on the shirt pulling, a worthy 8 for the Northants man.
Looking ahead to Saturday and the long journey up to Morecambe we see that Leigh Doughty from Lancashire is the man in the middle, no complaints from us, he’s local, happy days.
Mr Doughty has taken control of just 3 games this season but still managed to get the yellow card out on 15 occasions, and for good measure also sent 1 player off, in addition he has awarded just one penalty.
Mainly a Championship ref he took charge of 32 games last season, 24 of those in the higher tier. He booked 117 players, 0 double yellows, 4 red cards and gave 9 penalties.
The last time we saw Mr Doughty was back in February 2021 on one of his rare excursions to our level where we lost 4-2 on the road to Shrewsbury Town.
On that day we went 3-0 down inside 20 minutes, two of which were penalties. Will Grigg pulled one back two minutes later, but the Shrews put the game to bed on the hour mark, Charlie Brown scoring a consolation 8 minutes from time.
Checking the records, the last time won with Mr Doughty on the whistle was in December 2019 where we beat Pompey 3-1 at home, Healey, McGrandles and Gilbey were the scorers.
Assisting the ref will be Robert Merchant and James Wilson with Danny Woodard as the 4th Official.
