Dowd to referee Burnley for first time since 2010

Four of our Premier League games that season were refereed by Dowd. We won the first one, at home against Everton, but lost the other three at Portsmouth and the home games against Chelsea and Liverpool.

In those first two games he awarded shocking penalties against us as Tony Hibbert and then Herman Hreidarsson went down untouched in the box. Thankfully, neither side took advantage of the penalty which proved vital in the Everton game with us going on to win 1-0 from a Wade Elliott goal scored earlier in the season.

Dowd has been around a long time. He became a Football League linesman in 1992 and five years later moved into the middle at the age of 34.

By the end of 2001 he had refereed his first game in the Premier League, a 2-0 home win for Fulham against Everton, a game that saw him yellow card seven players and send off both Luis Boa Morte (Fulham) and David Weir (Everton).

Now established as a Premier League referee, he's had the honour of refereeing both a League Cup Final (Aston Villa v Manchester United in 2010) and an FA Cup Final (Chelsea v Liverpool in 2012).

This season he has, to date, refereed five games, three in the Premier League, one Championship game and one Capital One Cup tie. He's not sent anyone off but has yellow carded 17 players of which seven were home team players and ten away team players.

From seven qualifying games he is in 12th place in the Premier League RATE THE REF Table with a rating of 61.83 out of 100.

The assistant referees tomorrow are Peter Kirkup (Northamptonshire) and Andy Garratt (West Midlands). The fourth official is Carl Boyeson (East Yorkshire) whose last Burnley game was last season's draw at Nottingham Forest.

Previous Burnley Games