Ipswich Town (h): Match Officials

The Football League has now announced the officials that will take charge of the match between Lincoln City and Ipswich Town.

Lincoln City host Ipswich Town on Saturday, September 17 for the match at Sincil Bank, and the match carries a 15:00 kick-off.

Referee: Ben Speedie.
Assistants Refs: Geoffrey Russell and Steven Rushton.
Fourth Official: Oliver Bickle.

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Ben Speedie was promoted to the Football League ahead of the start of the 2020/21 season and his first match in charge at this level was between Carlisle United and Fleetwood Town (1-3) in the Football League Trophy.

This will only be the second time that Ben Speedie has been the man in the middle for a match involving Lincoln City:

27/10/20: Crewe Alexandra 0-1 Lincoln City (League One) – 1 yellow card

TOTALS: Matches: 1 — Yellow Cards: 1 — Red Cards: 0

He received an average rating of 7.931 following the 1-0 win away at Crewe Alexandra last season. Some of the comments can be found below:

sedgleyimp: “Not a difficult match to ref that. 1 deserved booking for them. A couple of what seemed like pretty obvious fouls were missed but no major howlers. I’ll give him a pretty decent 7/10.”

hulloutpost: “Didn’t notice him so always a plus mark for that and the teams didn’t give him anything contentious so no big calls to make or marks to be gained there. A competent 7.5.”

Chimpimp: “Long gone are the days when referees hated coming to referee physical Lincoln with the managers always on their case.

It’s these clubs lower down the pyramid, like Ipswich, where they have the problems now.

Easy game to referee but there are still plenty of referees that could have tried to be more prominent.

8/10.”

Ben Speedie: 2021/22 Stats:

07/08/21: Fleetwood Town 0-1 Portsmouth (League One) – 3 yellow cards
11/08/21: Coventry City 1-2 Northampton Town (EFL Cup) – 1 yellow card
14/08/21: Accrington Stanley 2-1 Cambridge United (League One) – 3 yellow cards
24/08/21: Leeds United 3-0 Crewe Alexandra (EFL Cup) – 3 yellow cards
28/08/21: Salford City 3-0 Newport County (League Two) – 7 yellow cards
04/09/21: Bristol Rovers 1-0 Crawley Town (League Two) – 1 yellow card
07/09/21: Doncaster Rovers 0-6 Rotherham United (EFL Trophy) – 1 yellow card
11/09/21: Plymouth Argyle 3-0 Sheffield Wednesday (League One) – 5 yellow cards

TOTALS: Matches: 8 — Yellow Cards: 24 — Red Cards: 0

Ben Speedie was the man in the middle for 29 matches last season, showing 78 yellow cards and 5 red cards.

He was just a little card happy in the FA Cup match between Morecambe and Solihull Moors, which finished 4-2 to the hosts, when he showed 10 yellow cards.

Speedie oversaw 13 matches during the 2019/20 season, of which 12 were in the National League and 1 was in The FA Cup. In those matches, he showed 34 yellow cards and 1 red card.

He was most card happy in the National League match between Barrow AFC and AFC Fylde (1-1) when he showed 6 yellow cards and 1 red card.

Sources: English Football League & Soccer Base.

Thank you to Graham Burrell and Lincoln City Football Club for the photograph!

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