Keith Stuart Hackett (born 22 June 1944) is an English former football referee, who began refereeing in local leagues in the

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and metropolitan county, metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of City of Doncaster, Doncaster and City of Sh ...

area in 1960. He is counted amongst the top 100 referees of all time in a list maintained by the

International Federation of Football History and Statistics The International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) is an organisation that chronicles the history and records of association football. It was founded in 1984 by Alfredo Pöge in Leipzig. The IFFHS was based in Abu Dhabi for so ...

(IFFHS). Keith is currently the president of non-league club Penistone Church F

Career

He reached the Northern Premier League and became a Football League linesman in 1972. Three years later he advanced to the Supplementary List of referees and one year later in 1976 to the full List at the age of only thirty two. He made progress and in 1979 was senior linesman to

Ron Challis Ronald Challis (1932 – January 2001) was an English football referee in the Football League. During his time on the National List he was based in Tonbridge, Kent. Career Challis became a Football League referee in 1968 at age 35. In 1975, he ...

in the

FA Cup Final The FA Cup Final, commonly referred to in England as just the Cup Final, is the last match in the Football Association Challenge Cup. It has regularly been one of the most attended domestic football events in the world, with an official atten ...

. The next season, he took charge of an

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

semi-final between Arsenal and

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

. The match required a replay, which he also handled, but that ended all-square as well, and two further replays were required to separate the teams. The following season saw him step up to the ultimate domestic honour of the

1981 FA Cup Final The 1981 FA Cup Final was the 100th final of the FA Cup, and was contested by Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. The original match took place on Saturday 9 May 1981 at Wembley, and finished 1–1 after extra-time. Tommy Hutchison opened th ...

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

, finishing 1–1 between Spurs and Manchester City. Aged only thirty six at the time, he was one of the youngest Cup Final referees. Tommy Hutchison of City scored both goals, causing the game to go to a replay, which Hackett also refereed at Wembley, the game ending 3–2 to Tottenham. He was then appointed to the FIFA List for the following season of 1981–82. He was then appointed to the 1984 Charity Shield match, in which Everton defeated

1–0, courtesy of a

Bruce Grobbelaar Bruce David Grobbelaar (born 6 October 1957) is a Zimbabwean former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper, most prominently for English team Liverpool between 1981 and 1994, and for the Zimbabwean national team. He is remembered fo ...

own goal. In 1986, he refereed the

League Cup In several sports, most prominently association football, a league cup or secondary cup generally signifies a cup competition for which entry is restricted only to teams in a particular league. The first national association football tournament t ...

Final, where

Oxford United Oxford United Football Club is a professional football club in the city of Oxford, England. The team plays in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. The chairman is Grant Ferguson, the manager is Karl Robinson and t ...

beat

QPR Queens Park Rangers Football Club, commonly abbreviated to QPR, is a professional association football, football club based in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England, which compete in the . After a nomadic early existence, they have played home ...

3–0, thus winning their only knockout trophy. Internationally, he was a match official at the 1988 European Championships, in which he took control of

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

's 1–1 draw with

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

in Group A on 10 June at the

Rheinstadion The Rheinstadion () was a multi-purpose stadium, in Düsseldorf, Germany. The stadium was built, near the Rhine, in 1926 and held 54,000 people at the end of its life. It was the home ground for Fortuna Düsseldorf from 1953 to 1970 and 1972– ...

. Hackett also officiated at the 1988 Olympic Football Tournament, handling the semi-final between

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and West Germany, which Brazil won on penalties following a 1–1 scoreline after extra time. He refereed the 1990–91 league encounter between Manchester United and Arsenal at Old Trafford, a match notorious for the 21-man brawl breaking out just after the hour mark. The melee resulted in Arsenal being docked two points and Manchester United one by

The Football Association The Football Association (also known as The FA) is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the oldest football association in the world a ...

, upon a three-hour consultation with Hackett and his match officials. He continued to be one of the senior English referees, even after his retirement on age grounds from the FIFA List at the end of 1991. Although he reached the English retirement age at the end of the 1991–92 season, he was granted an extension and was one of the first set of

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

referees for its inaugural

1992–93 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 '' Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since t ...

campaign. He was granted another extra season on top of this before retiring just short of his 50th birthday in 1994.

In retirement

He later worked as a referees' assessor before, on 1 March 2004, he was appointed

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, replacing Philip Don. Hackett has also worked to promote knowledge of refereeing via several publications. He published his own book, ''Hackett's Law; a Referee's Notebook!'' in 1986. And he continued to provide the answers for cult classic cartoon quiz

You Are The Ref ''You Are The Ref'' is a British comic strip which has run in various publications since 1957, featuring a series of improbable hypothetical football scenarios that then invites the reader to make the refereeing decision. Created by sports artist ...

, drawn by sports artist

Paul Trevillion Paul Trevillion (born 11 March 1934) is an acclaimed sports artist, whose career spans 70 years. Born in Tottenham, North London, Trevillion, produced artwork for publications like ''Eagle'' while still at school, from the 1960s to the 1980s, T ...

, which he has done since the 1970s - originally for ''Shoot'' magazine, and then for

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

newspaper. He co-authored a book with Trevillion celebrating 50 years of the strip in December 2006. And from August 2008,

's collection of ''You Are The Ref'' strips appeared online at guardian.co.uk. In early 2007, Hackett also produced a DVD-ROM with Trevillion called ''Referee Academy'', for use in the training of match officials, with

sanction A sanction may be either a permission or a restriction, depending upon context, as the word is an auto-antonym. Examples of sanctions include: Government and law * Sanctions (law), penalties imposed by courts * Economic sanctions, typically a ba ...

from the FA,

the Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...

and the

. During the 2007–08 season, he also wrote a regular column in the matchday programme for

Crystal Palace Crystal Palace may refer to: Places Canada * Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick * Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario * Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...

and now writes for caughtoffside.com.

References

Print

*Football League Handbooks, 1972–1975 *Rothmans Football Yearbooks, 1976–1994 *Keith Hackett (1986) Hackett's Law, Collins Willow *Gilbert Upton (2005) Football League and Premiership Referees 1888 to 2005, Soccerdata

Internet

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hackett, Keith Living people 1944 births Sportspeople from Sheffield English football referees FA Cup Final referees English Football League referees Premier League referees UEFA Euro 1988 referees