Aaron Lockett (1 December 1892 – 10 February 1965) was an English

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

and

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er. He played football in the

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 Engla ...

for

Port Vale Port Vale Football Club are a professional football club based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, England, which compete in . Vale are the only English Football League club not to be named after a place; their name being a reference to the valley o ...

, and also appeared for

Stoke Stoke is a common place name in the United Kingdom. Stoke may refer to: Places United Kingdom The largest city called Stoke is Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. See below. Berkshire * Stoke Row, Berkshire Bristol * Stoke Bishop * Stok ...

and

Stafford Rangers Stafford Rangers Football Club is a semi-professional English football team from Stafford which plays in the Northern Premier League Premier Division. The team wear black and white stripes with black shorts. Stafford Rangers' rivals include T ...

. He played cricket for

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

between 1920 and 1939.

Football career

Lockett played for Wereton Queen's Park, Audley, and Kidsgrove Wellington, before joining

in the summer of 1914. He scored on his debut at

The Old Recreation Ground The Old Recreation Ground was a football stadium located in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, England, and home to Port Vale F.C. from 1913 to 1950. It was the sixth ground the club used. Structure and facilities The stadium was in rather bad conditio ...

in a 3–1 win over Oldham Athletic Reserves in a Central League match on 13 February 1915. He finished the season with four goals in eight games and was one of the goalscorers in the North Staffordshire Infirmary Cup final 3–0 win over

Macclesfield Town Macclesfield Town Football Club was an English professional association football, football club based in Macclesfield, Cheshire, that was liquidation, wound-up after a High Court of Justice, High Court ruling on 16 September 2020. Initially kno ...

in 1915. With

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

still raging, the Vale went into abeyance and Lockett returned to Audley. Port Vale resumed activities in August 1916 and Lockett rejoined them for a number of games. He returned again to Audley in the summer of 1917 and then moved on to

. He scored five goals in nine games in 1917–18 and six goals in 12 games in 1918–19 – this tally included a hat-trick against Blackburn Rovers and three goals in two games against Port Vale. He then played for

before returning to Vale a third time in September 1919. He played nine games in the

for the club before being released at the season's end; for a fourth time he joined Audley.

Cricket career

A right-handed batsman who was a right-arm bowler, Lockett made his debut for

in the 1920 Minor Counties Cricket Championship against

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

. He played Minor counties cricket for Staffordshire from 1920 to 1939, making 155 appearances. He took 633 wickets for Staffordshire at an average of 13.53. Playing for Staffordshire allowed him to appear for the combined Minor Counties cricket team. He made his first-class debut for the team against the touring

West Indians A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use it ...

in 1928. He took the wicket of Frank Martin in the West Indian first innings, and the wicket of

Vibart Wight Claude Vibart Wight (28 July 1902 – 4 October 1969) was a West Indian cricketer who played two Tests in the 1920s and 1930s. Wight was born in Georgetown, British Guiana and made his first-class debut in 1925. He was a useful middle-order ba ...

in the second innings. With the bat, he scored 22 in the first innings and 154 in the second. This was a key innings, considering the Minor Counties had been asked to follow-on after being bowled out for 108. His innings boosted the Minor Counties second-innings total to 326, which helped them to a 42-run win. He played a second and final first-class match for the team in 1929 against the touring

South Africans The population of South Africa is about 58.8 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions. The South African National Census of 2022 was the most recent census held; the next will be in 2032. In 2011, Statistics Sout ...

, when he was only moderately successful. His two first-class matches left him with 197 runs at a batting average of 65.66. He played as a professional for

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

in the Central Lancashire League from 1929 to 1940, taking 100 or more wickets in a season five times. He stood as a first-class

umpire An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

in 68 matches from 1948 to 1950.

Career statistics

Source:

Honours

Port Vale *North Staffordshire Infirmary Cup: 1915

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lockett, Aaron 1892 births 1965 deaths Sportspeople from Newcastle-under-Lyme English footballers Association football forwards Port Vale F.C. players Stoke City F.C. players Stafford Rangers F.C. players Stoke City F.C. wartime guest players English Football League players English cricketers Staffordshire cricketers Minor Counties cricketers English cricket umpires