It’s a once in a Lifetime award

HONOUR: Ray Lewis, right, with NLP Editor-in-Chief David Emery

PICTURE: Stuart Tree

Lifetime Achievement

NATURALLY, to us, every National Game Award is special but there is one recognition that we consider to be the ultimate honour.

The word ‘legend’ is often overused in football these days but not so when it comes to winning the NLP Lifetime Achievement Award – only true legends can win that!

Take our last winner, Ray Lewis, for example.

The 78-year-old picked up our last NLP Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 for his sterling work as a Football League offi cial, starting more than 50 years ago. 

During his career, Ray reached the dizzy heights of refereeing the first FA Cup semi-fi nal to be held at Wembley and awarded the free-kick from which Paul Gascoigne scored one of the most memorable goals in the competition’s history as eventual winners Tottenham beat Arsenal.

However, Lewis was also the man in the middle for a game that will go down as one of the most catastrophic days in football as 96 people lost their lives when Liverpool faced Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough in 1989.

After serving one year in the Premier League in its inaugural 1992-93 season, Lewis retired aged 49 having spent 24 years as a Football League offi cial.

Since his retirement, Ray has gone on to become the president of the Surrey County Football Association and he currently chairs the FA’s leagues committee.

“It is a great honour and I didn’t expect it so it was a lovely surprise,” said Lewis, who is a lifelong Leatherhead supporter.

“To receive a national award form an organisation like The Non-League Paper is fantastic and there are a lot of people at this level of the sport who just do things for the love of it and it is a great way to say thank you very much to those people.” Who will be the latest legend of the game to be honoured? All will be revealed on June 14.