Vale – David Lee
Football NSW has been saddened to learn of the passing of respected junior coach and former High Performance and Coaching and Development Manager David Lee.
Lee had been widely credited as the coach who helped shape the career of Harry Kewell as well as developing a number of Australia’s highly talented players during his time at the then Soccer NSW.
The NSW based coach was a passionate advocate for technical coaching and was still helping kids develop well into his 70s.
Residing in Carlingford for most of his life, Lee held a number of qualifications and coached a number of teams as well as having played a pivotal role in developing a number of Australia’s finest football stars.
Lee’s first coaching job was with the Gladesville-Hornsby Under 14 Youth League side in 1969 and a year later his team ended up taking out the State Championships.
From there on he coached the likes of Sydney Olympic Reserve Team, Western Suburbs Youth Squad, Blacktown City amongst a number of other teams.
In 1975 Lee introduced modified “Roo Ball” to the Ku-ring-gai District where over 1000 children played in its inaugural year and by 1977 over 3,000 children were playing “Roo Ball”.
In the same year, Lee ran selected boys live in football clinics. These were the first camps in Australia for talented players which Rale Rasic and the late Johnny Warren began in 1976. Australian players produced from these camps included the late Ian Gray, Jim Patikas, Rod Brown, Mark Brown, Paul Carter, Graham Arnold, Peter Raskopoulos, Rob Wheatley amongst a host of other stars.
He also was appointed to the Australian Soccer Federation Committee for Technical matters as well as getting involved with various schools such as St Joseph’s College, St John’s College and Narrabeen Sports High.
Lee was instrumental in 1994 in providing grants and scholarships to the value of $200,000 as he was an invited member of the Board of the Big Brother Movement which enabled Australian footballers to pursue training in the United Kingdom.
In 1989 he was appointed Director of Coaching for the NSW Soccer Federation. He then formed a junior academy program for 12-15 year olds and obtained State Government grants of $20,000.00 per annum for coaching with the program. He also coached the NSW Squad for the under 18s to National Titles as well as producing 20 International players during that period.
Lee successfully negotiated with the Department of Sport and Recreation and Racing the NSW Academy of Sport for football to be included into the Talented Athlete Program in 1990. Football was allocated 144 positions in the program which received Government support of $20,400.00 per annum. From there he successfully negotiated football being included in all Country Regional Academies between 1991 and 1994 which included academies in the Riverina, Western, North Coast, Illawarra and North Western.
Lee also played a pivotal role in the development of coaches and increased the number of coaches annually undertaking courses from 800 to 2,500.
FNSW would like to extend their condolences to David Lee’s family on his passing.
Funeral Detaills
Friday 4th July
Leura Memorial Gardens, Lot 1-17 Kitchener Road, Leura at 1pm
Everyone is welcome to join the family afterwards at Leura Golf Club, Sublime Point Road
