Back in Burnley on Boxing Day

Last updated : 25 December 2008 By Tony Scholes
He introduced new rules in that Wednesday game by allowing the visitors to take a penalty without or goalkeeper being ready, a crazy and clearly incorrect decision. It gave Wednesday the lead but Ade Akinbiyi equalised for the Clarets a minute later and the game ended at 1-1.

Mathieson is now in his fifteenth year as a Football League referee and he's refereed a number of Burnley games, and perhaps, last year apart, his worst performance was in yet another Boxing Day clash at Bury in 1999.

He sent Steve Davis off in that game, although there could be no argument with the Burnley captain handling the ball on the line, but his performance was a poor one that day and he went a bit crazy with his yellow cards.

That's not something he does too often, and overall he's been ok when refereeing Burnley games. He isn't a referee who appears to want to be the star attraction and he does allow players to get on with playing.

This season, in 21 games, he's handed out just 38 yellow cards whilst the only player he's sent off is Darlington's Steve Foster in their 2-0 home win against Lincoln. Of those yellow cards 20 have gone to home team players and 18 to away team players.

This will be his second Burnley game this season, he previously was in charge of our Carling Cup win at Bury back in August.

He will be assisted by Danny Roberts (Greater Manchester) and Wayne Trott (Merseyside) and the fourth official will be Bob Roberts (Lancashire).

Previous Burnley games:

Season

Opps

V

Res

Y

R

Burnley players carded

a

1997/98

Carlisle

a

1-2

3

0

Brass Ford

1998/99

York

a

3-3

2

0

Cooke

1998/99

Chesterfield

h

1-2

1

0

.

1999/2000

Bury

a

2-4

8

2

Davis(R) Branch Cook Cowan Little

2000/01

Nott'm Forest

a

0-5

4

0

Davis Payton

2001/02

Birmingham

a

3-2

4

0

Alan Moore Davis

2002/03

Franchise

h

1-0

2

0

Taylor

2004/05

Coventry

h

2-2

1

0

Sinclair

2004/05

Brighton

h

1-1

2

0

Cahill

2005/06

Carlisle

h

2-1

0

0

.

2007/08

Sheffield Wed

h

1-1

4

0

Caldwell Unsworth

2008/09

Bury

a

2-0

1

0

.