Pawson became a Football League referee at the start of the 2008/08 season whilst still in his 20s and after ending the previous season by refereeing the Conference Play Off Final between Exeter and Cambridge at Wembley.
He was allocated just the one Championship game in his first season, that between Coventry and Blackpool at the Ricoh in January 2009, and in each of the last two seasons has refereed seven times at Championship level.
He's more familiar to our opponents tonight, having refereed them both in non-league and Football League games, the most recent of them coming in April of this year in their 4-1 home defeat to Barnet.
Last season he gave out 69 yellow cards and just three red cards in 28 games with 24 of those yellow cards going to home team players and 45 of them to away team players.
He's never been a referee to overuse his cards so his only game so far this season came as something as a shock as no less than seven players were carded in Preston's 4-2 home defeat against Colchester United, including one very familiar name to Burnley fans.
The Preston players carded were Paul Coutts, Clarke Carlisle, Iain Hume and Neil Mellor whilst Ian Henderson, Magnus Okuonghae and Lloyd James from Colchester also received their first yellow cards of the season.
The assistant referees tonight are David Storrie and Ricky Wootton (both West Yorkshire). The fourth official is Paul Marsden (Lancashire).