Referee: Sunny Singh Gill
Assistant Referee: Paul Kelly, Daniel Bonneywell
Fourth Official: Harry Wager
Gill is a face we’re familiar with, having had him four times before. He’s the son of a referee himself, one you’ll doubtless all remember: Jarnail Singh. However, Sunny has made something of a name for himself in the game right now.
This weekend will be the fifth time Gill has officiated an Imps match. He was in charge of our 1-0 defeat at Port Vale, a game best forgotten. On that occasion, I was happy with him, saying after he booked Ben House early that “it pointed to Sunny Gill being too card happy, but he had a strong game in his first spell officiating an Imps game. His Dad, Jarnail Singh, would seemingly send one of ours off whenever we got him, but Gill handled things well from the first minute to the last.”
The Sunny Gill curse continued as we went down 2-1 at Exeter to end our ten-game unbeaten run last season, but again, I wasn’t blaming the referee. I write he was “impeccable throughout. I didn’t think he got many decisions wrong, bar one in the first half where there was either a foul on our forward (can’t remember who) or it was a goal kick, but he gave a corner, then as soon as the ball was delivered blew for a foul. If that’s the only thing to moan about, you know the referee has had a good game. Here’s my prediction for you – Sunny Gill will be a Premier League referee sometime in the next five or ten years”. High praise.
In 2023, he officiated our 2-0 defeat at Peterborough in the final days of Mark Kennedy, and last season, he was in the middle as we went down 2-0 to Portsmouth on the final day. I didn’t have cause to moan on either occasion. What you will notice is we’ve had him four times, and lost all four matches. Eeek.
Last season, he officiated in all four divisions, and had a League Two play-off game. This season, he’s officiated in four divisions as well, but instead of Crystal Palace and Luton in the Premier League, like last season, he had Woking and York in the Conference. Bit of a change! Most recently, he took charge of Norwich’s 6-1 win against Plymouth Argyle.
He’s pretty middle of the road, averaging just over three bookings per game, and only having sent off one player in his 13 outings. He is ninth out of 55 for fouls per game, so expect to hear the whistle a fair bit, although he’s 14th for fouls per tackle, which suggests he’s pretty consistent, even if he does break up play a bit. In League One, he has awarded a penalty once almost every two games (0.40 per game), but the outlier is he has only awarded three all season, two just happen to be in League One.
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