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Date: 26th April 2025
Lee (32), who won the award for his work with Rothes Juniors 2012 and his charity football work in Malawi, has had an interesting and varied career to date. He began working life in the Royal Navy, before going to work in the funeral business with the Co-op, after which he has changed direction totally and is currently studying sports management at Fife College and he is also working to get his more advanced coaching badges from the SFA.
He has been involved with coaching 12-13 year-old youngsters for many years now and says that the best thing about this, “is watching them grow as individuals and as a team. At this age, they are starting to form the personalities that will carry them through their teenage years, but they are also more knowledgeable about football and it’s great seeing the enjoyment they get from the game.”
As well as his coaching, Lee is involved in every aspect of the running of the club (“chief cook and bottle washer as well as coach,” says his wife Louise) and will become its chairman in May this year, adding even more to his responsibilities.
His work in Malawi came about through the involvement of one of the local churches in Glenrothes, specifically Rev Alan Kimmitt of St Columba’s (now Heart of Fife Parish Church) without whom the trip would never have happened.
In addition, Lee’s good friend, Ian Young (Rothes Juniors 2011) was another key member of the party. Scotland has long had a connection via the Church with Malawi and Lee told us that while he started off in a small-scale way, with organising football kit to be sent to Africa, “my interest developed arms and legs and then I was off to Malawi for what was an incredible trip.”
Organised by the Church, but with Lee and Ian there to provide football coaching and encouragement, he found a country where the poverty is at a level we find hard to imagine.
“We were used to drinking water from plastic bottles, then I realised that everyone we went the kids, who were naturally curious about seeing white people, would come running and ask for the bottles. They’d then take them to the local market to sell them: everything you can imagine – petrol, cooking oil and even paint, is put in them! For them, it’s a means to make a tiny amount of money to keep them going.
“We played a lot of football, and one day there was this guy who approached us wanting to talk. He didn’t speak much English, but he made it clear he wanted his team to play ours – although when I say ‘ours’ I mean the local kids to whom we’d given the Rothes strips. We said yes and then when we went to the game, the pitch, like all pitches there, was mainly dust, and they had hacked down trees to make goalposts. Both teams posed with the Malawi and Scotland flags and we fought out a 1-1 draw.
“As well as football equipment, we also took netball gear, because that’s also popular in Malawi. I can’t begin to describe just what a fantastic experience it was for everyone who went. One day, Ian and I hope to be able to go back again.”
Lee (right) is seen in our photo, with Alastair Blair (left), Director of Operations, SFSA, and SFSA member and active supporter, Callum McKinnon of M&S Accountancy and Taxation, Dunfermline, presenting him with the lovely Caithness Glass trophy for Grassroots Hero of the Year 2024.
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