Sporting Blacketts

On 21 March 2008 Lee Blackett, a rugby union football player for Leeds Carnegie, scored the fastest try in Guiness Premiership history, taking just eight seconds to breach the defence of Newcastle Falcons. None of the opposing team touched the ball. Leeds won the game by 16-15.

Lee Blackett is not the only Blackett with connections to Rugby Football Union. His Honour Judge Jeff Blackett, (who is also Judge Advocate General of the British armed forces and a circuit judge), is Disciplinary Officer of the RFU and conducted the 2008 enquiry into the behaviour of the England squad on their New Zealand tour.

Blackett links to professional sport go back some time. Joe Blackett played football for Loughborough until 1896 when he transferred to Wolverhampton Wanderers, before joining Derby County in 1900. In 1908 he was playing for Leicester Fosse, later known as Leicester City. Mortimer Charles Blackett (1881-1938) was a 1st Class cricketer in 1910/11 and was a member of the South African team that toured Australia. And Frederick Blackett competed in the 400 metres hurdles as part of the British team at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, which was immortalised in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. Sadly, Frederick did not win a medal, which perhaps explains why he did not feature prominently in the movie. He did however win the English Amateur Athletics Association 440 yards hurdles in 1924 and 1925.

More recently, Andrea Blackett, a Bajan athlete, who was born in London in 1976, won a gold medal in the women’s 400 metres hurdles at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.