Billy Kee the striker who swapped League One for bricklaying: Professional football took its

May 2024 · 8 minute read

It is 18 months since Billy Kee retired from professional football. The former Accrington Stanley striker, a prolific goalscorer for the club in the lower leagues, was only 29 but has zero regrets.

“The lads at work still think I’m absolutely bonkers,” he says. “So I just say, ‘You think I’m bonkers but you don’t realise what it takes out of you’.

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“They just see it as the dream to play professional football but I’ve done it, I did it for 10 years, and it took its toll — I’m not afraid to admit that. I’ve gone from playing professional football, which is a lot of people’s dream, to working on a building site. But I’m not ashamed of that because I needed to do that for myself and my family.”

Kee is a bricklayer now, and speaks to The Athletic before Coalville Town’s FA Cup first qualifying round tie against AFC Rushden & Diamonds on Saturday. He joined the seventh-tier Leicestershire club, which is a 15-minute drive from his house, shortly after leaving League One Accrington in a bid to rediscover the joy of playing football again — and he has found it.

Now 30, Kee retired in January of last year because of his struggles with anxiety, depression and bulimia, bringing an end to a 10-year pro career that included the highs of winning the League Two golden boot in 2017-18 as his 25 goals helped Accrington to promotion as champions. It also brought its fair share of lows, though, exacerbated by living away from his wife Leigh and two young children Brady, seven, and three-year-old Kolby.

All the best in your retirement, Billy Kee 💙❤️#EFL | @ASFCofficial pic.twitter.com/pwwws9Uiwm

— EFL (@EFL) January 31, 2020

“Anyone who suffers with their mental health, you need your friends and family around you, so being away from home as footballers is tough,” says Kee. “I don’t know if people realise when you’re travelling and your wife and family aren’t around how hard it is and how much it takes it out of you. Only football people who are professionals probably realise that.

“With my friends and family, they’re the ones who are there if you go off the rails and you want to turn to alcohol or whatever, they’ll question what you’re doing. It’s nice to have them around you all the time and the kids are a lot better; because (in his pro days) they are not seeing you out all the time, travelling on a bus for away matches. I do work a lot but I’m home every night for them.”

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His new line of work is hard and has been a learning experience that is a far cry from life as a professional footballer.

Kee’s days start early on the building site, where he has followed in his father Terry’s footsteps to train as a bricklayer — at the moment that means working on new-build houses.

It took around eight months for the former Torquay United, Burton Albion and Leicester City youth player to reach a decision on what to do with himself after making his mind up to retire — a break from the full-time game which he says had been “a long time coming”.

“I was 28 and just said to my mum and dad, ‘This is my last season. I can’t play it anymore and do this to myself anymore’. I needed to change my lifestyle. They said, ‘That’s fine’, and so I knew that was it for me playing football at the professional level.”

BILLY-KEE-ACCRINGTON Billy Kee played a vital role in making Accrington a League One club in 2018 (Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Kee did not report for pre-season in July 2019 and Accrington announced he was having specialist treatment for depression, anxiety and bulimia before he retired six months into that season. The Lancashire club retired his No 29 shirt in honour of Kee’s contributions across two spells at the club totalling 240 appearances and 83 goals.

Now he wears the No 10 at Coalville, and his name is read out as “Super Billy Kee” by the announcer before Saturday’s FA Cup match.

The match is open and Rushden do well to keep Kee quiet, but leave space for his strike partner Tim Berridge to give the home team the advantage in the opening minutes and net another three times over the course of the game. Coalville are impressive for their 5-2 win over their divisional rivals and though Kee is not on the scoresheet this time, he has three goals in the five league games so far this season.

Coalville club secretary Steve Cartwright admits they were not shy about announcing Kee as “the biggest signing in our history” on Twitter, although there are other ex-professionals in the squad.

NEWS | Super Billy Kee has signed a new one year contract with the club 🙌🤩 pic.twitter.com/TRnQv4FgO9

— Coalville Town FC (@CoalvilleTownFC) June 12, 2021

He’s had a great impact in terms of the morale of the team,” Cartwright tells The Athletic. “He’s really fitted in well, he’s not big-time at all because he’s had a successful professional career — he’s down-to-earth and one of the lads. He’s passing on his knowledge. We have some guys who are good enough to make it into the professional game so he’s advising them a bit on what to do and how to avoid some of the pitfalls.

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“Last season when the league was suspended (because of the pandemic, Coalville played their final league match in the October), we were top of the league and unbeaten and we have real hopes of pushing for the National League.”

Those young players have regularly turned to Kee for advice since he joined the club and his message is simple: “You have got to live and breathe it.”

That in itself is loaded with positives and negatives, not least that it can be a shock to the system when a player’s pro career comes to an end.

A timely reminder of that came last week as the partner of sixth-tier club Yeovil Town’s captain Lee Collins, who took his own life in March, spoke out about a lack of support for the 32-year-old, who was concerned about his future as he reached the end of a 14-year playing career. Rachel Gibbon said Collins had “no support” and “what to do next was a real worry”.

“The thing with football, and you see that the other night with the racism stuff (in England’s game away to Hungary) and on social media, it’s always constant,” Kee says. “You’re always fighting that losing battle with people who don’t understand the professional game.

“Mentally, the pressure of stuff like that is very hard. I can only say that it’s tough to choose to live and breathe football when you are young and that’s what you have got to do. Not all people get to do it, so you have got to have that luck to actually get there in the end.

“I don’t have any regrets about anything but I’m not a regretter anyway. It’s been a good journey but I would say to anyone: Don’t be scared about stepping away.

“You’ve got to be willing to work even if you’re at the top. Even (for players now) at the top of the Championship the money will run dry, they’ll still have to work and do something. It’s hard and I don’t think there’s enough in place for footballers after their careers. I don’t know what a footballer would do after, because there’s that many coaching now, managers, it’s really hard.

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“That’s why a lot of players find themselves in a bad place — they don’t know anything else.”

Kee says he doesn’t know how much longer he will continue playing but that for now he is “just trying to enjoy every bit of it”. Working hard while learning on the job as a bricklayer, plus two training sessions and one game a week, keeps him busy, even if the last 18 months have been a test that has seen him “in the deep end a bit”.

“I like it. When you’ve played football all your life then you become a bricklayer and learning it the way I’ve done it — you have to have the confidence that you can do it,” he says. “Within 18 months to two years, I can build houses, it’s nice. Before, I had never picked up a brick in my life, so I still laugh about it now. I’ve got a family and two kids so I couldn’t really sit around and go to college and do it the other way.

“If I could do things again, I wouldn’t have been a professional footballer, if I’m completely honest.

“I wouldn’t change anything from my career now but if I did it again, knowing what I know, I would not be a professional footballer.

“I would have played non-League and got a good job, but that’s the way it is.”

(Photos: Billy Kee/Coalville Town FC)

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