798 Lawrie Dudfield

Biography

Striker Lawrie Dudfield joined the Tigers in June 2001 for a club record £250,000 transfer fee. He was sold by a Leicester City side managed by Peter Taylor – hold that thought. Placed straight into Brian Little’s City first team, Dudfield struck up an immediate partnership with fellow forward Gary Alexander and contributed ten goals by mid-December 2001, with Alexander scoring a further nineteen strikes. These goals took the Tigers to third in the League Division 3 table but only one win in seven league games during December and January saw City’s challenge fade. By March 2002 Brian Little was sacked and Dudfield had drifted out of the team under Billy Russell’s caretaker management. Dudfield returned for the last three games of the 2001/02 season and scored three goals for Jan Molby’s side.

At the start of the 2002/03 season, with Molby now fully installed as manager, Dudfield was selected to start the first six games but City registered no wins and Dudfield scored no goals. A fortnight later Dudfield struck in the 4-0 win over Carlisle, Molby’s one decent result in six months, but dropped out of the first team again when Peter Taylor, the man at Leicester who sold Lawrie to Hull City, was appointed to lead the Tigers. Dudfield had a two month spell as impact substitute that coincided with the first handful of league matches at the KC Stadium, but he fell out of favour again in March 2003 and was loaned to Northampton Town, where he scored once in 10 appearances. Lawrie left the club in May 2003.

Lawrence George “Lawrie” Dudfield was born in Southwark, South London, but raised in a Northamptonshire village pub. He played for National League side Kettering Town as a teenager, making his first team debut at sixteen years of age and making 25 appearances for the Poppies during the 1996/97 season. He joined Premier League side Leicester City on his seventeenth birthday in May 1997 and made his Foxes debut in an April 2000 Premier League draw against Everton, coming off the bench to replace his boyhood hero Tony Cottee. He made only one further appearance for Leicester, against Aston Villa a month after his debut. He had a loan spell during September 2000 at League Division 3 side Lincoln City (3 appearances) then had a further loan at League Division 3 side Chesterfield (18 appearances, 4 goals) between November 2000 and March 2001 where he played with Ryan Williams, another player to join the Boothferry Park throng in the summer of 2001.

In July 2003 Dudfield left the Tigers, conevrting his loan at League Division 3 side Northampton Town into a permanent move. In half a season he scored six goals in 24 senior appearances for the Cobblers, then in February 2004 he was loaned to divisional rivals Southend United where he scored five goals in 13 appearances. He made the permanent switch to Southend at the start of the 2004/05 season and scored seven goals in 46 appearances across all competitions, winning a Football League Trophy winner’s medal after beating Bristol Rovers in a two-legged final, then winning the play-off final at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium against Lincoln City. A falling out with the Southend chairman saw Dudfield leave the Shrimpers over the summer of 2005 and he started the 2005/06 season back at Northampton Town, adding one goal in seven appearances before joining League Two side Boston United at the end of August 2005. Lawrie saw out the 2005/06 season at York Street, scoring five goals in 41 appearances.

In the 2006 close season Dudfield switched to League Two side Notts County, he spent two years at Meadow Lane and scored twelve goals in 83 appearances before the Magpies dropped out of the Football League at the end of the 2007/08 season – in eleven years of senior football Dudfield had scored 56 goals in 313 senior appearances. He closed his career during the 2008/09 season at Cork City (seven goals in 12 appearances), Chelmsford City and Corby Town, then briefly returned to playing in 2011 for Boston United and in 2014 for newly-formed side Hull United.

Dudfield spent six years working as Community Manager for Nottingham Forest between 2009 and 2015 and also spent much of the 2011/12 season managing Leicestershire-based Northern Premier League side Quorn. In 2012 he started football training and tours company Iconz Experience, working alongside former Leeds striker Alan Smith and former Leicester manager Micky Adams. Splitting his time between homes in Nottingham and Florida, he also did football pundit work for local radio stations and was Director of City Stars, a Hull-based Community Interest Company delivering football coaching sessions to schoolkids. In November 2023 he became co-owner of Florida-based youth side Brooke House FC, an offshoot of a sports school established in Leicestershire in the 1960s.

Details

Nationality: England
Date/Place of Birth: 7 May 1980, Southwark
Hull City First Game: 11 August 2001, Exeter City A (League Division 3), 21 years, 96 days old
Hull City Final Game: 1 March 2003, Carlisle United A (League Division 3), 22 years, 298 days old

Clubs

Kettering Town (1996-1997), Leicester City (1997-2001), Lincoln City (2000, loan), Chesterfield (2000-2001, loan), Hull City (2001-2003), Northampton Town (2003, loan), Northampton Town (2003-2004), Southend United (2004, loan), Southend United (2004-2005), Northampton Town (2005), Boston United (2005-2006), Notts County (2006-2008), Cork City (2008-2009), Chelmsford City (2009), Corby Town (2009), Boston United (2011), Hull United (2014)

Hull City Record

Career: 66 apps, 15 goals