Premiership ref at the Priestfield

Last updated : 24 August 2003 By Tony Scholes

The referee in question is Bolton based official Mark Halsey who will be refereeing only his second game this season and the first was not without incident. That was the Premiership game between Arsenal and Everton at Highbury last weekend when he sent off both Arsenal’s Sol Campbell and Li Tie of Everton with four yellow cards to add to that.

He thus becomes the second referee at Burnley games this weekend to have sent off two players in his first game of the season.

Halsey’s overall record though is not bad and last season in 34 games there were 75 yellow and 6 red cards and one of those red cards was again Sol Campbell in Arsenal’s Highbury clash with Manchester United.

He is more likely to give a yellow card to an away team player, of those 75 last season just 29 were handed out to home team players with the other 46 going the way of the away players. His red cards though did go the other way with 4 home players and 2 away players being sent off.

Last time he was in charge of a Burnley game was last season’s 2-0 home win against Preston and on that occasion he kept both his cards in his pocket throughout the match. But Glen Little will remember him for a red card at Cardiff in our promotion season.

He will be assisted at Gillingham by Keith Stroud and Kevin Pike, both from Dorset.

Previous Burnley games:

Season

Opps

V

Res

Y

R

Burnley players carded

a

2002/03

Preston

h

2-0

0

0

2000/02

Crystal Pal

a

1-1

5

0

Armstrong, Cox, Thomas

1999/2000

Cardiff

a

2-1

3

1

Branch, Little(red)

1997/98

Southend

a

0-1

7

0

Blatherwick, Cooke, Williams