‘I just love playing football’: Lee Trundle on his Messi-esque odyssey in the Welsh lower leagues Exclusive interview: The Swansea City legend may be 43 but his passion for the game has never been stronger and he still has an eye for goal

“I just love playing football.” Lee Trundle doesn’t hesitate when asked why, age 43, he still pulls on his boots and sacrifices his Saturday afternoons to the beautiful game.

Against the backdrop of the wind turbines above the Amman Valley he has just spent a cameo half-an-hour fading no-look passes about the pitch for Ammanford AFC in a routine win, buffeted by freezing winds and lashed with flurries of hail, snow and rain. The visitors, Afan Lido, have made the roughly 30-mile trip up from the industrial stronghold of Port Talbot, leaving behind the shadow of the steelworks and its billowing chimneys for the wild expanse of south-west Wales.

It’s here that Trundle has found the 18th club of his 25-year career. A former mining town, even if the cutting machines long ago whirred to a halt, Ammanford isn’t famous for football. In the midst of Carmarthen’s rugby heartlands, it’s a wonder that Ammanford AFC get a decent crowd most weekends. But they do, with attendances of around 800 for local derbies. Trundle’s arrival will have helped, given his iconic status at another club not so far away.

Lee Trundle. Remember him? Well he's still scoring absolute belters. ???? #bbcfootball pic.twitter.com/2mh2ikvuad — Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) March 10, 2020

Slightly closer than Port Talbot is Swansea, where Trundle wrote his legend as a player. Ammanford falls well within Swansea City’s orbit, another pressure on local sides given that the Championship club pulls in fans from far and wide. “There are a lot of Swans fans here, but they’re just a little bit further out,” Trundle tells i. “When you come here, we’ve got myself, we’ve got Andy Robinson who’s ex-Swans as well, and it’s great when fans want to catch up. They’ll talk to you about games that they were at, big games that they watched where you were playing for Swans, and it’s brilliant. I love doing that, I love talking about things like that because it brings me back to them times as well and brings great memories back for me.”

Having started out playing for non-league sides within striking distance of his home in Liverpool, Trundle only turned professional in his mid twenties. He joined Swansea from Wrexham in 2003 when the club was in the old Third Division, soon to be rebranded as League Two. Over the next four years, he scored 86 goals in 173 appearances, fired the Swans to promotion – helping to set off what would turn out to be a golden era for the club – and was idolised by fans for close control, ball skills and finishing which often seemed comically out of place in the depths of the Football League. Less successful stints at Bristol City, Leeds and Preston followed along with a brief return to Swansea on loan and, after spells in the Welsh top flight and back in non-league, Trundle retired age 36.

That didn’t last long, though. Trundle grins as he talks about how he was inexorably drawn back to football. “Every chance I got I’d go and have a game, whether that was five-a-side or seven-a-side, day or night, charity match, whatever,” he says. “When I first came out of professional football, I went and played for my local team in Liverpool. That is proper grassroots, the amateur league.” Trundle featured regularly for Page Celtic in the Liverpool County Premier League, though he also played for his local pub, The Oak Tree, on Sundays.

“I’d go back to Liverpool when Swans were away, because when Swans are at home I work the games,” he says, in reference to his role as an ambassador for the club where he is still the ultimate cult hero. “When they were away I’d go back, see my family and play on the Saturday and Sunday. I was doing that for two years and then my missus got pregnant… we were having our baby in Swansea, so I couldn’t get back and play.”

That was when Trundle was asked by his friend Andy Hill, then manager of Llanelli Town, to make a comeback. Since he came out of retirement to play for Llanelli in 2016, Trundle has been racking up goals in the Welsh lower leagues at a rate which can only be described as Messi-esque. The opposition are usually semi-pro, mind, but watch him for five minutes and it becomes apparent that he’s still got a touch of magic. While exact figures are hard to come by for the lower reaches of the Welsh league pyramid, Trundle reached the 50-goal mark in his first season with Llanelli, including nine hat-tricks, as the team went unbeaten. At any level, that is ridiculous.

Lee Trundle showing he still has it in his 40s! pic.twitter.com/X1u3p2ty9A — Former Footballers (@FinishedPlayers) January 6, 2020

Having helped them to reach the Welsh Premier League with back-to-back promotions, he decided to move on. “I didn’t want to do all the travelling because a lot of the teams are in north Wales and you can be sitting on a coach for eight hours a day,” he says. “It was similar to the thing where I didn’t want to be going back to Liverpool. I wanted to enjoy a game of football, but I’ve done all that.”

A prolific spell at Haverfordwest County followed but, with the club way out west in Pembrokeshire, Trundle struggled to juggle games and training with his work commitments at Swansea. He then signed for Trefelin, where he also plays for the over-forties team on a Sunday, but the club’s lack of floodlights left him worried that he wouldn’t play regularly enough to stay sharp. Finally, last summer, he settled on Ammanford. “It was just the right fit,” he says. “We’ve got a great bunch of lads… it’s a real community club.” His numbers haven’t been quite so ludicrous this season, though he still has 12 goals from 15 outings.

Even at the age of 42, Lee Trundle has still got it! pic.twitter.com/BgNHHFycjW — Former Footballers (@FinishedPlayers) June 8, 2019

With little sign of him slowing down with age will he just go on forever, an eternal footballer? “There’s no time limit on it,” he says, when asked when he might call it a day once and for all. “I’ll keep playing for as long as I can. I think I’ll stop when I know that I’m not having an impact on games and I think I’ll know that myself.

“The last thing I’d want is just to be out there because of my name and because I’ve been a professional footballer. I want to be out there contributing to the team, scoring and setting up goals. I want to be doing well, I don’t want to just be out there for the sake of it.”

Trundle is occasionally reminded of his age, having been limited to half an hour against Afan Lido on account of a recent knee operation. While all Welsh football has since been suspended because of coronavirus, a pandemic is probably the only thing that could keep him off the pitch for any length of time. “Even now, I’ll still set my work week up as my match day,” he laughs. “In my head, I’ll still do my food, I’ll still eat, I’ll still train and do everything as I used to do, fitting it around my work at Swansea of course. But everything will be geared to match day.

“That’s what I love and I think, once you’ve been a player and you’ve done that most of your life, match day is the best day of the week. So, for me, it’s something I look forward to and I still get that buzz. While I still get that buzz and I can still go out and play, I’ll keep going.”