21 Questions With... Lee Southwood

Lee Southwood played Centre Half for Trafford from 1999 to 2002 and 2004 to 2009. His 8 seasons of service saw him become the Club’s leading appearance maker with 311 competitive games. A Captain and later Player/Assistant Manager under Ged Kielty, Lee is often described as 100% in commitment and reliability. In a recent 21 Questions, Ged described him as a leader and a great role-model.  Lee made his debut in November 1999 and played his last game for Trafford nearly 10 years later in April 2009. During his time at Shawe View he was a NW Counties League Champion in 2007/08, NPL President’s Cup Winner twice (1999/00 and 2008/09) and a Two-time player of the year in 1999/00 and 2006/07.

   1. Lee, you arrived at Shawe View in November 1999. What was your football career prior to joining Trafford, and how did you come to sign for the club?

I'd never been on any clubs books so simply went from junior football to playing amateur on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. I was playing Saturday's for Willows (Salford) in the Manchester League. Mark Molyneux (Molly), who was manager of Trafford at the time, knew the Willows manager and asked him if he had a centre half available as they needed one for their next match - my name was put forward, so I went down for what I assumed was going to be a one off game to simply help out!

2. Your debut was away to Marine on 9th November 1999. A 1-1 draw in the NPL League Cup. What do you remember of that first game?

It was a Tuesday night so played under floodlights. Amateur football was only played under lights for cup finals! I remember walking into the changing room and the players were in their Trafford match day tracksuit and I was handed a t-shirt and jacket for a pre-match warm up. Amateur football has changed a bit now but back then there was no such thing as a match day tracksuit or warm up! I really enjoyed the big step up in level – Marine were actually in the league above Trafford. The game itself went really well and I felt I did ok. Molly asked if I was available on Friday night for Lincoln at home (which we won 2-0) and the rest is history!

 

3. You scored 6 goals for the club – Do you remember any of them?! Talk us through your best one! You scored TWO in one game against Stone Dominoes at Shawe View in October 2004, there must have been some banter after that one (despite the 2-3 defeat!)

When you only score 6 you remember all of them!! The best one was at Winsford. I’d gone up for a corner and it bounced out to me on the edge of area. For some reason I attempted a side scissor kick (like Mark Hughes for Wales v Spain back in the 80s…you might need to google it) and it flew in the top corner.  We got beat 3-2 that night as well. I remember the two against Stone and I think I nearly got a 3rd. It’s always a nice feeling to score but as a centre half I’d rather have a clean sheet! 

 

Lee slides in to score a goal... unfortunately in the wrong net - occupational hazard! 0-1 defeat to Mossley in the Manchester Premier Cup, 26.10.04 

4. I presume you had a day job whilst playing? How did you find it balancing work & life in general with having to train, travel & play games for a team at a decent level of football?

Yes, I worked in insurance and still do. Fortunately, my employers were always good and allowed me to leave early if I needed to for a Tuesday night away game. Sometimes you could have Tuesday night games a couple of hours away which meant not getting in until the early hours of the morning and then having to be up for work a few hours later. I didn’t have children until my last year of playing, which helped. 

5. What would you say your strengths were as a player?

I was never the quickest so had to make sure I could read the game well. I also wasn’t too bad in the air, which helps as a centre-half!

Good at taking an elbow to the face too! (V's FC Utd)

6. What do you remember of Trafford as a club? It has a good reputation for being well-run and having some great people behind the scenes, did you find that to be the case?

Trafford is a fantastic club and has a real family feel about it. I was made very welcome from day one. There were some great people behind the scenes during my time at the club such as the Brown family, Foxy, Tin Tin, Dave Law, Dave Murray, Tom Walmesley, Frank Glover etc.  There were also genuine fans such as Cappy, Steve Leach, Gaz etc who followed the team home and away and had songs for all the players. Where else does that happen at this level of football? 

7. For a big proportion of your career at Trafford you played alongside Billy McCartney who’s a bit of a Legend in Non-League. What was he like to play alongside and be team-mates with?

Billy was already at Trafford when I first arrived and helped me settle into a team which was full of strong characters. We hit it off from day one and I felt our styles complemented each other. He was a great defender and leader and was a more of a player than me so I just let him have the ball. I would say Billy was the best player I ever played alongside. He was a great lad as well.

 

8. You won the NPL President’s Cup twice while a Trafford player – 1999/2000 you beat Whitby Town on penalties after it had finished 5-5 over 2 legs… 9 years later you picked up the Cup for a 2^nd time winning the 2009 Final under Ged Kielty’s management by beating Quorn FC 2-0 at their place. What are your memories of those cup wins?

 

The Whitby one was crazy. Whitby were in the league above us so would have been favourites to win it. We beat them at home in the first leg 2-1. To say the 2^nd leg was lively is an understatement. Probably one of the most hostile atmospheres I’ve played in! It was 10 v 10 from early on and then I got sent off in extra-time I think. We made it 3-2 in the final minute to take it to penalties! The locals weren’t happy at the end!!

The Quorn final was fairly uneventful compared to the Whitby one and I seem to recall it was a comfortable victory once Scott Barlow got his 2^nd. We had a good away following that night so it was good celebration at the end. It was the same night Liverpool drew with Arsenal 4-4 (think Arshavin scored 4 for Arsenal) and our result was below that one on Sky Sports News.

 

9. The NWCL Title win of 2008/09 season must have been brilliant to be a part of. Is it up there with the best achievements of your career? What do you remember of that season?

Yes it was great to be part of, especially as it was a fairly new, young squad. To win any league is a great achievement but it was the first one I’d won at that level. I seem to recall we made a slow start but then something just clicked. I think we won 6-0 at Silsden and never looked back. We won 18 games on the trot scoring a hatful of goals and conceding a handful. We were going for the title against Salford and went there and won 2-0 towards the end of the season. That was the moment I knew we’d win the league.

10. Whilst Googling I came across a match report that suggested you went in goals when the keeper was sent off – was that a regular occurrence?

I did play in net once. The year we won the league we played Winsford in the League Cup and Tom Read got sent off at 0-0. I stepped in and we got beat 3-0!!! 

11. What’s your best moment or memory from your Trafford career? What’s the worst?

 

Obviously the league and two cup wins were great, however my best moment /memory will be from the year we won the league. I was voted Player’s Player of the Year for that season. For me, being recognised by your team mates is the best award you can receive in football.

The worst moment was in my first spell. We were at home to Telford in the FA Trophy. Telford were in the Conference and full-time. We drew 1-1 and we missed a glorious chance in the last minute to win the game. We went there for a replay on the Tuesday and got battered 7-1!!

12. We’ve heard some stories about things that happened on the team coach or at Players’ nights out – Do you have any crazy stories or funniest moments?

The majority of these will involve Molly and there are two that spring to mind that don’t need censoring!!!

There was a lad in the team called Gareth Thomas and he had these trainers that had seen better days. We went out for the warm up and could see smoke coming out of the changing room. We went back in and there were Gareth’s trainers smouldering. Molly had only gone and set fire to them!! To be fair he bought him a new pair!

The other one was travelling back from an away game. We were in a minibus coming back and travelling along a country lane when we came across a field full of sheep (had to be nearly 100 of them). Next thing Molly starts doing a farmer’s style whistle at the sheep and all of a sudden these sheep start legging it. God knows where they went but I can imagine the farmer just sitting down to eat his tea and these sheep hurtling passed his farmhouse!!

 

13. What do you remember of your team-mates? Who were “top guys” back then? Who would you say was the most talented player……….? Any “worst team mates” / players who shouldn’t have put a pair of boots on?!!!

I played alongside some top players during my 8 years at the club. Too many to list to be fair. In terms of talent, I’d probably say a scouse lad called Joe Murray. I think he came down in the second season of my first spell. He was fit as a fiddle, always at the front of pre-season running, ripped, played centre-mid, scored goals and could tackle. He could have played higher but I think he was training to become an air traffic controller. I can’t think of any that were that bad although you could always tell the ones who wouldn’t make it when they turned up for pre-season training in shin pads and boots!!!

14. What would you say was the best game you were ever involved in?

The 2^nd leg of the final against is obviously up there but in the semi-final we beat Blyth Spartans 1-0 at their place. The referee was a homer and awarded them two very soft penalties from what I can recall but our keeper Jim O’Donnell saved both of them. Blyth, like Marine and Whitby, were in the league above us so it was a great win. A few of us had already arranged to stay over in Whitley Bay, so as you can imagine we had a great night.

15.  Did you have any superstitions? 

Tried to have the same pre-match meal of jam on toast. Another one was trying to accumulate enough bookings to be suspended for the Saturday following my work’s Christmas party!!

16. You left Trafford for 2 years between 2002-2004 – Why was that? And how did it come about that you returned to the club?

Molly took a job at Chorley towards the end of the 2001/02 season. A few players went with him immediately and he asked me to go with him also. I stayed on to the end of the season to see how things went with his replacement Joey Dunne. Joey was a decent bloke but as anywhere he brought his own players in, however I didn’t like the dynamic of the dressing room and decided to join Molly at Chorley. I stayed at Chorley for 1 ½ years and then played a couple of months at Salford. It was in that summer I got in touch with Danny Johnson and asked about coming back to Trafford.

17. After two seasons as Player/Assistant manager with Ged Kielty – a really successful two seasons for the club – Ged stepped down and you left the club with him. Was that an easy decision to make? Did you not fancy stepping up into the hot-seat?

I’d already made my mind up earlier in the season that I was calling it a day. The main factor was my wife and I had our first child in the October. My wife is a teacher and was going back to work in the summer and as mentioned previously playing at this level of football takes a lot of your time up during the week and on a Saturday.

18. What did you do after leaving Trafford? What are you up to these days? Do you do any coaching? Are you still involved in the game? If not, ever fancied a return at that that level?

I had no involvement in football at all when I left Trafford. The spare time allowed me to achieve an ambition of completing my first (and only) marathon. I played a bit of vets football 3 or 4 years ago but knocked it on the head once I started taking to my son to football sessions. He will be 7 in July and now plays for a local team on a Sunday. Coaching has never interested me so I’m quite happy taking a step back and watch him from a distance. My two children are very active and they have something on every day, be it football, swimming, netball or guides so our spare time is taken ferrying them about.

19. You are Trafford’s record appearance maker with 311. Was that statistic ever on your radar, especially in the last season or two you played? How would you feel if that record was ever broken? (current player Chris Palmer has moved into 4^th place with 275).

In the last season I knew I could break Garry Vaughan’s record and Foxy kept reminding me how many games I had left to do it. It was a very proud moment to achieve it especially as I thought I was just helping out in my first game. I played with Garry in my first spell and when he took the job after Ged I wondered if he was going to play himself to get the record back! To think the record still stands after 12 years is amazing really. I thought it would have been overtaken by now. Records are there to be broken and good luck to Chris if he does.

20. You’ve been seen back a Shawe View a few times over the years – what do you feel about the club these days? Do you enjoy watching the team? How does the club look to you as an ex-player?

 

I still have a keen interest in Trafford and it is one of the first results I look for on a Saturday evening. I keep up to date with the website and also receive the monthly newsletter. It looks like the club is still fantastically run and it’s great to see there is now a supporters club.

 

I’ve not been down to a game for a couple of seasons although having said that I came down to the recent Pontefract home game not realising it had been postponed. Obviously since then the league has been abandoned and I sincerely hope Trafford are in a position to continue once football starts again, whenever that may be.

21. Are you still in touch with any of your old Trafford team-mates? Do you have anyone, an old team-mate you’re still in touch with, who you’d like to nominate to do a future “21 Questions”?

 

Unfortunately when you finish playing you do lose contact with a lot particularly as most have their own family commitments, however I’m still in touch with a few of the lads over social media and hope to have a catch up with them at a home game soon. For 21 Questions I’d say my old mate Billy McCartney. 

 

THANKS to “Southy” for a brilliant set of answers there, absolute Trafford Legend!

And good to see a mention for three of our oldest fans – Cappy, Leechy & Gaz!

Who is next…??