Meet The Ref - Newcastle v Latics - Mike Jones

Latics travel to the North East to face Newcastle United on Monday, Chester official Mike Jones is the man charged with ensuring that the game is played in a competitive but fair manner

This will be Jones' third Latics game this season, we have lost both of the other two, Chelsea at home (0-2) and Swansea away (2-1), it will be his first Newcastle game this campaign

I thought Jones may prove to be a lucky ref for the Latics, his first ever Premier League game was our 5-1 away win at Hull when that man Zaki grabbed a brace, but since then he has refereed us 11 times and we've only won once, drawing 2 and losing the other 8! There have been some dire performances in there as well from Jones

The 43 year old whistle blower started refereeing because he was awful at football and sick of being left out at school when the other boys were kicking the ball around, so he took to enforcing the laws of the game at the tender age of 15.

Jones was promoted to become a football league referee in 1997 and progressed to the Premier League in 2008 when he took charge of the Hull City v Wigan Athletic game, in an interview Mike was asked:

What is the best game you have officiated and why?

He replied: 'The best game for a sense of achievement was my first Premier League Game between Hull City and Wigan Athletic.'

A 5-0 away win for the Latics that day and one that Jonesy will remember all his life, almost forgive him for the other 10 non performances

Mike Jones Card Watch 2012/13

Games - 13
Yellows - 37
Reds - 0

Newcastle United v Wigan Athletic
Referee: M Jones
Assistants: G Beswick, P Bankes
Fourth official: N Swarbrick.


This weeks podcast was recorded at the DW Stadium prior to the Man City game

We had Barry, Dan, Rob, Paul and Gareth on location, we are chatting about the win over Reading last Saturday, plus we look ahead to the City game and try for a bit of analysis at the end.

You can download the podcast from itunes, you can download from our hosting site www.buzzsprout.com , or simply click play on the embedded player below

As always feedback, both positive and negative is welcome and if you want to get involved in the recording of future episodes please contact us at wigan@vitalfootball.co.uk marking your email 'Podcast'




















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