A member of the Birmingham County FA’s Race Equality Advisory Group has been honoured with an MBE for services to community football in Birmingham.
As the manager of Britain’s first ever black-led football club, Lincoln Moses received the title in the Queen’s New Year Honours thanks to his work in uniting communities throughout the city through sport.
Lincoln, 48, first joined Handsworth based Continental Star FC as a player in 1975 and has now been general manager of the club for 23 years.
During that time, the club have recruited players from inner city Birmingham and used football to support, guide and counsel those who have often found themselves excluded from mainstream society or been affected by gang-related crime in recent years.
Speaking about the honour, Lincoln, who hails from Witton, said: “I do not think of this award as being about myself, it is about the community I come from.
“I have such a passion about my community and I do anything I can to serve it and help. This award shows change can happen. If Obama can do it, if I can do it, it can happen.”
The club certainly reaches out to all areas and ages of the community by running 15 men’s teams as well as a women’s team and after-school club.
“We started out as one football team, but we have reached a level where we have become more like a social enterprise,” he added.
Dave Shelton, the Birmingham County FA Secretary, added: "I would personally like to congratulate Lincoln on this massive achievement which I as well as the Birmingham County Football Association are really happy for Lincoln to receive.
"We have witnessed first hand the amount of time and dedication Lincoln has put forward to the game, and he fully deserves the recognition for this via the MBE."
As well as sitting in the Birmingham County FA’s Race Equality Advisory Group, Lincoln is also involved in the ‘Kick It Out’ campaign against racism in football and chairs Birmingham City Council’s Community Football Forum.
In addition to this, Mamun Chowdury from Beaumont FC joined Moses on the list of New Year’s Honours.
Mamun has been received a MBE for his services to Asian community football in East London. The 31-year-old started the Beaumont Club in 1993 while a pupil at Stepney Green Secondary School.
The East London side resigned from the Essex Senior League this season after Mamun guided them to the Umbro International Cup. The club then went on to win the 2006 Canary Wharf Summer Cup and was voted Senior Team of the Year.
Mamun has worked tirelessly to promote football in and around the Tower Hamlets area and has local MP Jim Fitzpatrick, transport minister, as an honorary patron of the club.