Referee: TOM REEVES
Assistants: Christopher Husband and Darren Wilding
Fourth Official: Jamie O’Connor
There’s not a lot of previous between us and Tom Reeves – just three matches, but they’ve been quite interesting.
We lost the first 2-0 to Ipswich, and the ref had no bearing on the outcome at all. This is his fourth season on the Football League list, having spent three years in the National League. In that time, he didn’t seem particularly card happy, although he did send off former Imp Chris Bush in a game between Notts County and Bromley. He wasn’t entirely unknown to Lincolnshire sports fans; he was in charge in 2019 as Boston United beat Carshalton (any still shudder when they read that word?) 4-1 in the FA Cup.
His last two matches in charge of us have both seen a red card and an Imps win to nil. The first was Bristol Rovers at home in the League, when we won 1-0. I thought he had a tough afternoon in our favour – he missed a foul in the build up to our goal, and sent off their striker for leading on Carl Rushworth with an elbow. He didn’t send off Montsma for the same offence, but a video later led to our Dutch defender serving a three-match ban.
He also flashed a red in the game he officiated last season – our 1-0 win at Fleetwood. He didn’t have a lot of trouble in that game, until the last minute when Toto Nsiala had a little dig at Jovon Makama and earned himself a red card.
However, despite the two cards, I’ve always found Reeves to be a decent ref. He’s only had one game in our league this season, Huddersfield and Shrewsbury, which had one yellow card. In fact, he’s only shown 13 in his five matches across the EFL and cup competitions, and six of those came in one game, all for Accrington against Colchester. That means almost 50% of his cards across ten teams were shown to a single side!
Also, depending on your definition of interesting, it is interesting to note assistant referee Christopher Husband was running the line for another game against Bristol Rovers – our 6-3 win there under Mark Kennedy.
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