Leading umpire Tony Hackett will celebrate a big achievement in the most important match of the season.
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Hackett will officiate in his 500th match in the grand final between Wagga City and South Wagga.
The 63-year-old couldn't have picked many bigger moments to bring up the feat but the achievement definitely caught him by surprise.
"To think I'm clocking up 500 is just crazy," Hackett said. "If someone had of told me when I first started I was going to do 500 I would have said they had rocks in their head."
Hackett is no stranger to grand finals and when he strides out to the middle with Dennis Chaplin it will be the 10th time he's been in the hot seat in a Wagga Cricket decider.
He started umpiring son Cameron's under 13s matches in the 2002-03 season and soon realised it was something he wanted to do.
"I thought geez this is alright and I asked Jack Misson about it and he said there's a course next week," Hackett said. "The rest is history."
His love for the game has taken Hackett to representative carnivals across the state, including the Australian Country Championships, he's been a member of the Country Cricket representative panel since 2014-15 and has 12 first grade matches in Sydney to his credit.
It's definitely surpassed his ambitions when starting out.
"When I started in December 2002 I had two goals - I wanted to make it to first grade in Wagga and umpire an O'Farrell Cup game," Hackett said.
"Now I've done 12 first grade games in Sydney, which is a pretty big thing for a boy from the country."
Hackett won a fourth grade premiership with South Wagga in 1982 but never afforded himself the time to devote to the game.
But he's made up for that with the grand final to be his 40th match of the season.
Hackett thanked wife Lynn for allowing him so much time to spend in the sport and he's got no time frame for giving it away.
"It's my hobby and something I love doing," Hackett said. "I love the game of cricket, my camaraderie with my fellow umpires and trying to manage so many personalities."
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