Leo Callaghan (5 February 1924 – 8 January 1987) was an

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

referee in the

English Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engl ...

. He was also a Welsh FIFA referee.

Career

Callaghan was born in Merthyr Tydfil,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. He made the Football League referees list in 1954 at the age of thirty, and went on to have a seventeen-year career at this level. His greatest domestic honour came when he took charge of the

1968 FA Cup Final The 1968 FA Cup Final was the 87th final of the FA Cup. It took place on 18 May 1968 at Wembley Stadium and was contested between West Bromwich Albion and Everton. West Brom won 1–0 after extra time. Jeff Astle scored the winning goal, thus a ...

between

West Bromwich Albion West Bromwich Albion Football Club () is an English professional football club based in West Bromwich, West Midlands, England. They compete in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football. The club was formed in 1878 and has pl ...

and Everton at

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 ...

. He is one of only three Welshmen to referee the

Final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: * Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

(the others being Mervyn Griffiths and Clive Thomas). He was also an international referee. This included two Group matches as linesman and one Group C match as referee (between

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

and

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

) at the 1966 World Cup Finals in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, as well as six matches in eleven years involving

in the British Home Championship, and in European competitions, such as the 1968 UEFA European Football Championship qualifying rounds. On 11 June 1967 he took charge of Sweden versus

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

in the Råsunda Stadium,

Solna Solna Municipality ( sv, Solna kommun or , ) is a municipality in Stockholm County in Sweden, located just north of Stockholm City Centre. Its seat is located in the town of Solna, which is a part of the Stockholm urban area. Solna is one of the ...

, in that competition. As regards club competitions, Callaghan was in charge of, for example, Atlético Madrid against

FK Vojvodina Fudbalski klub Vojvodina ( sr-Cyrl, Фудбалски клуб Војводина), commonly known as Vojvodina and colloquially as Voša ( sr-Cyrl, Воша), is a Serbian professional football club based in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, the second l ...

in their second round second leg tie in the European Cup on 14 December 1966 at the Estadio del Manzanares, when the two-leg scores tied at 3–3, and the result had to be decided by a

tie-break In games and sports, a tiebreaker or tiebreak is used to determine a winner from among players or teams that are tied at the end of a contest, or a set of contests. General operation In matches In some situations, the tiebreaker may cons ...

match a week later. An extraordinary event occurred on 14 September 1970. Whilst refereeing a

Football League Second Division The Football League Second Division was the second level division in the English football league system between 1892 and 1992. Following the foundation of the FA Premier League, the Football League divisions were renumbered and the third t ...

match between

Millwall Millwall is a district on the western and southern side of the Isle of Dogs, in east London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lies to the immediate south of Canary Wharf and Limehouse, north of Greenwich and Deptford, eas ...

and

Sheffield United Sheffield United Football Club is a professional football club in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which compete in the . They are nicknamed "the Blades" due to Sheffield's history of cutlery production. The team have played home games at ...

, the city of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

was engulfed by " rrential rain", causing the "abandonment of hegame after 25 minutes by ... Callaghan ...".Match abandoned due to "torrential rain"
, Millwall v. Sheff. Utd., 1970: ''Bob Dunning's "Thirty Years Ago"'' feature. Retrieved on 25 March 2008. He retired from the League list in 1971. He later became a Football League assessor.

References

Notes

Sources

*Football League Handbooks, 1954–1970 *Rothmans Football Yearbooks, 1970–1971. *Freddi, Cris (1998) The Complete History of the World Cup, Collins Willow. *Ionescu, Romeo (2003) The Complete Results & Line-Ups of the European Fairs Cup 1955–1971, Soccer Books Limited. *Ionescu, Romeo (2003) The Complete Results & Line-Ups of the European Football Championships 1958–2003, Soccer Books Limited. *Ionescu, Romeo (2004) The Complete Results & Line-Ups of the European Champions Clubs' Cup 1955–1991, Soccer Books Limited. *Ionescu, Romeo (2004) The Complete Results & Line-Ups of the European Cup Winners Cup 1960–1999, Soccer Books Limited. *Ionescu, Romeo (2004) The Complete Results & Line-Ups of the UEFA Cup 1971–1991, Soccer Books Limited. *Elleray, David (2004) The Man in the Middle, Time Warner, p49-50 (reference to role as an assessor) {{DEFAULTSORT:Callaghan, Leo 1924 births 1987 deaths Welsh people of Irish descent Sportspeople from Merthyr Tydfil Welsh football referees FA Cup Final referees 1966 FIFA World Cup referees