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About
Family history: He was born in Leeds in 1951, the son of Harry and Edna Lockwood – Harry was a tram conductor when he was born and Edna worked in the tailoring industry. He is the youngest of their children and has an older sister, Beryl. He is a lifelong Leeds United fan.
His charity work started when he was just 11 years of age when he began travelling all over the country along with his sister, doing charity concerts as the drummer with the ‘Skyliners Concert Party’. He had a varied job history before he officially started working at LUFC including working for The Gas Board as a fitter, an electrician, he worked in a foundry and as a professional drummer (at the age of 15 he was the youngest drummer in Yorkshire working in clubland and – hence his nickname, Stix). He married his wife Anne in 1974 and is Dad to Dawn, Arron and Shauna, and Grandad to 6 Granddaughters and 2 Grandsons ranging between the ages of 7 and 20. They are a close-knit family, all live locally to one another and are all massive Leeds United fans.
He officially took up paid employment with LUFC on 01/09/2004, although his involvement with the Club spans over 63 years. When as a young boy of 8 years of age, he became part of the ground staff under the great Don Revie. He described this involvement in an interview with The Football League in 2009 in a series they ran on ‘Unsung Heroes’ -Where he said “The pitch used to be horrendous. During the bad weather, the Club asked for volunteers to go to Elland Road to help make it playable. I went down to offer my services. The Club had these big 45-gallon oil drums we would stand on 4 bricks, set them alight and place them around the pitch in various places to help thaw it out. Then we’d put straw down to stop it freezing again through the night. So it would ready for tomorrows game. To be honest it looked like a farmer’s field and after some games it would be like a mud bath. But I loved being involved and never looked back”. His love for the club had begun. Stix went on to add “we were allowed to stay for the game and were given hot soup at half-time”. Later, he put his name down again to do voluntary work. He was taken on to answer the telephones, take messages and anything else that needed doing – and he did this for some years, covering the Community, Commercial, Lottery and Retail Departments, – before eventually being offered the paid role of Community Liaison in September 2004, which involved him being the link between the Club and the community-fans. This has since morphed and mushroomed into the role he was asked to undertake in 2012 as The Player’s Liaison Officer, which also incorporates the many and varied charity and community requests that come into the Club on a daily basis, as well as other duties including (but not limited to) him being the single point of contact within the club for the organising it’s official signed merchandise, matchday collections, research re Club history and past players (on request), the player’s fan mail and their general assistance/support. His wide-ranging matchday duties involving, his legendary Official Matchday Stadium History Tour, entertaining 50/60 people at a time, some of whom have attended the tour on numerous occasions because they said, each tour was different. Including assisting with the Sponsors, mascots, supporters, players and VIP visitors on the day.
Much of his other work is carried out, outside the hours of what would be considered the ‘standard’ working day (his work phone is never turned off).
His love and commitment to Our Club is second to none.
The number of charities, organisations and individuals/families that Stix has helped since he took up this role is literally unquantifiable but doubtless will be in their thousands – examples include Martin House Hospice, Candlelighters, St Gemma’s Hospice, St George’s Crypt, The Salvation Army, The Myfanwy Townsend Melanoma Research Fund (after the death of Leeds United Physio Bruce Craven to the disease), Spread Joy with Abi and recently Robert Hiscoe, who is raising money for the NHS. He also helps and supports Leeds United Supporters groups and clubs such as Marching Out Together, Leeds United Disabled Organisation (LUDO), as well as numerous overseas supporter’s clubs – particularly those in Scandinavia, Ireland and Malta, to name but a few.
In his role he maintains a vital link between LUFC and those in the local, national and international community who are disadvantaged, vulnerable, ill, recovering and unfortunately the very serious – and their families – and fosters links that bring long-remembered experiences of joy and comfort to people who find themselves in heart-breaking and devastating situations. He arranges visits to hospitals (including an annual Christmas visit to poorly children), as well as many other often unpublicised visits to the local Community and he accompanies the players who go. In addition, he accompanies players on school visits and so whilst a lot of his work is around supporting those in need, difficulty, grief, there is also an element of helping to inspire the next generation by making their local footballing heroes accessible to them within the Community. Even during the current health crisis, he has continued to do the best he can to help and support those who need it, within the restrictions. He is tireless in maintaining and promoting that sense of the ‘LUFC Family’, which can be either comforting, uplifting or motivating depending on the individual circumstances of those he deals with, and he genuinely has no concept of how important the work he does is, and just what it means to the people who contact him sometimes in the most difficult moments of their lives.
In his role, Stix has fostered and maintained long-standing links with the Armed Forces including The Parachute Regiment, The Yorkshire Regiment, The Royal Dragoon Guards, HMS Ark Royal (as it was the adopted ship of the City of Leeds before being decommissioned, and an association of such standing that saw him invited on board her). That navel link he has now carried on with HMS Audacious (the present adopted vessel of the City of Leeds), The Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes. He arranges for military personnel to attend matches, including high-ranking officers and those who have been injured in service, he also arranges for the latter to attend Thorp Arch to meet the players, to give them a lift mentally and emotionally as their recovery progresses. He is in regular contact with the two Military Hospitals, Headley Court and Selly Oak. He arranges for cards and messages of support to be sent to personnel serving all over the world and also for them to be featured in the matchday programme – HMS Ark Royal sporting crew members were even supplied with the club’s official kits to wear, as they played different sports and football matches around the world, in our colours. Hopefully HMS Audacious will be the next participants to follow on with this tradition. In addition to all this, he plans, co-ordinates and oversees the annual Military Day at Elland Road on the closest home game fixture to Remembrance Day – this is a massive event which takes a huge amount of preparation, time and work involving Club staff and numerous members of service personnel and is something that he always takes enormous pride in. He has also co-ordinated the allocation and distribution of the embellished ‘Poppy Shirts’ worn by the team during the Military Day match to charities/organisations/Military recipients, who are then able to auction them to raise much needed funds, as well as matchday collections for charities linked to the Armed Forces, again to help them in raising vital funds to go towards supporting their work.
Also, he co-ordinates the teams seasonal used kits, which are greatly received by Catterick Military Garrison, so they can be put to the best use and distributed at home and abroad.
There are numerous testimonies in thank you correspondence and on social media as to the positive impact he has had locally, nationally and internationally. This has also been recognised officially with two awards. In 2015 he was named as the recipient of the Football League’s ‘Club Heroes’ Award for Leeds United which was said to highlight ‘the role played by staff at clubs throughout the League, whose work often goes unnoticed’. Then in 2018 he was awarded the ‘Bobby Collins Award’ by the Club itself ‘which is given to an unsung member of staff who has gone above and beyond at the Club’. He is currently away from work, but hopes to return in the not too distant future.