Honouring our Lifetime legends

THE NLP 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 over-used 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 79-year-old picked up our last NLP Lifetime Achievement Award back in 2019 for his sterling work as a match referee and league official in a career spanning more than 50 years.

Lewis officiated one of the most catastrophic days in football as 96 people lost their lives when Liverpool faced Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough in 1989.

On retiring after 24 years as a official, Ray went on to become the president of the Surrey County Football Association and he currently chairs the FA’s leagues committee.

This year, we also remember our popular Lifetime Achievement winner of 2015, Brian Lee MBE, the former chairman and president of the Football Conference, who passed peacefully in hospital on February 12 at the age of 86.

Ray and Brian are, without doubt, true stalwarts of the Non-League game and were worthy recipients of this award.

Who will be the latest legend of the game to join the honours’ list? All will be revealed on May 23.