Ilderton to blow first whistle

This will be Ilderton's sixth season as a Football League referee and during his first four seasons he built up a reputation of being a homer, so much so that on his first three visits to Burnley he awarded us a penalty. We thought he'd had good games until we suffered him in an away game at Coventry when he just about awarded them everything.

Last season he refereed the home game against Palace, and for the first time at Burnley he didn't point to the spot (not that any other referee did either) and he had something of a quiet game.

For a long time last season it looked as though he was going to end it having yellow carded more home players than away players but a late rally put an end to that and by the time the season had finished he'd handed out 53 yellow cards to home team players and 57 to away team players.

Those 110 yellow cards came in 34 games and to add to that he sent off a total of 9 players and twice sent off two in one game. Preston's David Nugent and Glenn Loovens of Cardiff were both ordered off as Preston won 2-1 at Deepdale and Rotherham ended their game at Hartlepool with nine men and a 3-1 defeat after seeing both Martin Woods and Ian Sharps sent off.

It's never obvious what we are going to get from a referee at the beginning of the season, but he's not the most controversial of referees and hopefully he'll get the season off to a good start.

He will be assisted by Russell Green (Lancashire) and Alf Greenwood (Yorkshire) whilst the fourth official duties will be carried out by Paul Tierney (Lancashire).

Previous Burnley games:

Season	Opps	V	Res	Y	R	Burnley players carded
.
2006/07	Crystal Palace	h	1-1	4	0	Gudjonsson O'Connor
2005/06	Coventry	a	0-1	5	0	Hyde McCann Ricketts Sinclair
2005/06	Watford	h	4-1	2	0	Akinbiyi Dyer
2005/06	Brighton	h	1-1	1	0	Branch
2004/05	Millwall	h	1-0	4	0	Branch Cahill O'Connor