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Middlesbrough host Lincoln City on Saturday afternoon in the first Championship match of the season for both sides. The Football League have now confirmed the officials who will take charge of the match. QUIZ: How much do you know about the history of Middlesbrough Football Club? Click HERE to see if you can get 10 out of 10 on our quiz! Pre-match Discussion: Ahead of this match, you can get involved with the pre-match discussion HERE. Match Officials: Referee: Bobby Madley. Assistant Referee: Steve Meredith. Assistant Referee: Conall Bartlett. Fourth Official: Tom Parsons. Last match involving Middlesbrough: The last time he refereed a match involving Middlesbrough was their 2-1 defeat away at Sheffield Wednesday in the 2024/25 season. In this match, he brandished 7 yellow cards, including bookings for Mark Travers, Rav van den Berg, Finn Azaz and Hayden Hackney. Last match involving Lincoln City: His last match involving Lincoln City was the 4-0 win at home against Blackpool in League One last season when he showed 5 yellow cards, including a booking for Tendayi Darikwa. He received an average rating of 3.18 following the win at home against Crawley Town, with some of the comments from the forum below: hulloutpost: “Simply awful. Let their players kick lumps out of Jack for the entire first half until he was inevitably injured (that was the only tactic that came off for you today, Evatt, you ****. Conversely, every time there was a puff of wind near their number 19 putting in his pre-dives, let alone dives, he gave them a free kick during the same period. Did absolutely nothing about their very clear and consistent policy of fouling our players on every turnover when they could get near us. Awful decision on the two-handed push for the penalty we should have had; ignored blatant/excessive man handling of our players, glaring errors on handball and corner decisions. Should have been a red for the scything challenge after Ivan’s wonderful piece of skill. All the time wandering about with a stupid gurning grin on his face like he was some PL prima donna. A pathetic 1. Rasenimp: “I do think it was a bit of a pain to ref, and I have a bit of sympathy with referees on set pieces, etc where everyone just plays silly buggers now and pushes each other over. I do think players bear a bit of responsibility for some of that. I also think that when he got a few bits wrong, the die was cast and he was in for a bashing for a lot of niggly things, some of which I probably thought he was right for. House tried to buy a few free kicks he didn’t really deserve; some bits with Street were six of one half a dozen of the other, etc… But he didn’t have a great game. The shove on Hamer was blatant, and I agree with the above about the fouls after every turnover; whenever we won the ball and had a counter just seemed to get absolutely scythed down, particularly in the first half. Moylan was earmarked as the danger man, so Evatt’s angels just tried to lump him around the place. Meanwhile Bowler seemed to just blow over in midfield over and over again. 4.” Luke Imp: “As John says, he wasn’t biased and just had a really poor day. Constant delaying of corners to talk to players, and as I said in the match thread, there was the Hamer push, GK to us when it was a corner, not giving Bloxham a second yellow, the handball that they broke from, the challenge on Ivan as well. Too many big decisions wrong, albeit they weren’t match-defining ones. 5/10.” 2025/26 performance: He was in the middle for 22 matches last season, showing 82 yellow cards (3.73) and 4 red cards. He was most card-happy in the Championship encounter between Stoke City and Blackburn Rovers (1-1), when he showed 7 yellow cards and 1 red card, including a booking for former Middlesbrough loanee midfielder Lewis Baker.