Ken Aston was a primary school teacher the RAF rejected when he tried to join at the start of World War II. He went instead to the Royal Artillery, and ended up as a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Army. But it was as football’s most famous and respected referee that soccer people remember him.
It was he who had the brainwave that resulted in the invention of the game’s yellow and red cards.
“As I drove down Kensington High Street,” he said, “the traffic light turned red. I thought; ‘Yellow — take it easy; Red, stop, you’re off.”
He told his wife Hilda about it when he got home, and she went into another room and cut the first yellow and red cards. They’ve long been an essential part of what FIFA calls “the art of refereeing.”
Aston, tall, blond-haired and sonorous, refereed the most violent World Cup game of them all — Chile v Italy in 1962. This was the infamous “Battle of Santiago”. Talking about it later, he said, “I wasn’t reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres!”
Armed police had to enter the field of play three separate times to restore order, and Aston sent off two Italian players.
Ken Aston also refereed the 1963 FA Cup Final, and his yellow and red cards were introduced into the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
Between 1980 and 2001 he held numerous referees courses in the USA, and for his services to football in America he was awarded the MBE in 1997.
It was in America that I got this telephone number. My friend and American agent Paul Harris, co-author of my first book, gave it to me.
Scouting for items for my soccer museum project, I rang Ken Aston, and he invited me to his home in Ilford. He and his wife lived in an unpretentious but comfortable house, where I sat and talked with them, and partook of their hospitality — delightful tea and cake.
Ken generously gave me a FIFA World Cup blazer, an Italian pennant, and some very famous European Cup Final programmes of games he had refereed. Also a pair of yellow and red cards that he personally signed. Last but not least was a pair of pure white football boots! He had intended wearing these at the Manchester United v Leicester City FA Cup Final.
However, an hour-and-a-half before kick-off time he changed his mind, because he reckoned that the Football Association would have taken a dim view of them, and him.
A gentleman to his fingertips, married to a genuine lady, Ken was 86 when he died in 2001 — the most famous and respected soccer referee of them all.
TOP PHOTO ; Ken Aston and his lovely wife Hilda ,my thanks to Jeanette Bachmann for these photos.
