Stroud will have his cards with him

Last updated : 01 January 2006 By Tony Scholes

He didn’t let us down, by the time he had finished that yellow card had been out of his pocket seven times although thankfully only two of them went the way of our players. The major problem was that when the bad foul came he took no action.

That was Plymouth’s Bojan Djordjic, it was a bad one and Stroud immediately went for his card but then returned it to his pocket without using it, maybe because he had already yellow carded the player for a something and nothing offence.

Since that day, he’s continued with his card collection, although only once has he reached the number of cards as he did that day at Home Park. He didn’t only reach it either, he surpassed it with a total of ten in the Championship game between Leicester and Sheffield United.

I’ve only seen him the once and he did not have a good game at all whilst his record will suggest that he will not go through the game at Loftus Road without using his card. If he does, it will be the first time in 52 games since he became a Football League referee.

Whilst trailing the likes of Trevor Kettle, Stroud is putting together a fine collection of cards this season and could well be looking for his century tomorrow. He’s just four short with 92 yellow and 4 red cards from his 21 games so far in 2005/06.

He certainly breaks with the usual tradition regarding away players and has so far this season given more cards to home team players, 50 of those yellow cards have gone to home players with just 42 to away players, although all four of his red cards have gone to away players.

His assistants tomorrow will be Steve Tomlinson (Hampshire) and Roger Vaughan (Somerset) with Eric Mackrell (Hampshire) as fourth official.

Previous Burnley games:

Season

Opps

V

Res

Y

R

Burnley players carded

a

2005/06

Plymouth

a

0-1

7

0

Duff Harley