By Sam Gillinder
A special event at Horsforth Sports Club has paid tribute to highly influential football coach “Doc” Lee Towers, who died following a road accident in October 2024.
During his life Dr Lee Towers coached thousands of kids in Leeds, due to his passion for nurturing footballing talent in young people. Some have gone on to play at a very high level.
Doc Towers was walking across a zebra crossing outside the Jolly Tars pub in Victoria Road West in Cleveleys, Lancashire when he was hit by a man driving a motorbike. He later died in hospital on Wednesday, 13 November 2024, aged 82.
The event was attended by a huge number of people including his sons Jonathan and Tim Towers.
Jonathan said: “We are here celebrating what he did and the fact that there are so many people remembering him can remove the bitterness.
“He had been doing this since 1968 we know for a fact because we have got records of all the teams [he coached] most of them have photographs. So you’re talking about 56 years.”
Doc touched the lives of thousands of people during his life and was dedicated year in year out when there weren’t very many people doing what he did. He was loved by his family and everyone that knew him.
Charlie who played for Doc Towers aged 11 as a goalkeeper is now 19 and is heading to America to play football next season.
He said: “He was always a good beaming light. He was always positive, he was always happy to see us, just a really good person to be around.”
The tribute day started off with a football match between two teams made up of players who had been coached by Doc as young children.
There was a large age range, some in their early twenties, others who were older.
One team wore purple shirts, the other in white. The game kicked off and the purples held the majority of the possession. They went 1-0 up when the ball broke to Will Ward and playing as centre forward the purple number 9 neatly placed the ball over the goalkeeper into the net.
The purples went 2-0 up when Alfie Wilkinson, who had been causing the Whites problems, received a pass in the box from the right winger and duly knocked the ball into the goal.
The Whites then started to get a bit more of the foothold in the match. Two goals from Max Dickinson put the score at 2-2. The two teams went into the half-time break with the scores level.
The play resumed and the purples manufactured a great move resulting in a bullet header to put them 3-2 up. The Whites thought they had equalised again when they had the ball in the net but the referee gave an offside decision and the goal was disallowed.
Wilkinson then had a chance to put his side two goals up again but narrowly missed past the left of the goal. He made up for his miss minutes later when he did get his second goal of the match scoring to make the score 4-2.
The full time score was purples 4 whites 2.
After the memorial football match a crowd of people listened to a few of Doc Towers’ closest friends share memories from their time with him. Michael Rossiter, Andrew Smith and Joe Rossiter all spoke.
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