Manage your preferences

The Leeds Beckett website is designed to enable you to manage your own privacy preferences. By clicking on 'Cookies' below you can manage what data the site collects about your browsing. This will only maintain if you are on your own device or using a synched version of your chosen browser. If you are using a shared or public machine without synching your browser then there is no need to change the preferences.

Our site is built with accessibility in mind and we seek to adhere to the WACG AA levels of compliance for digital accessibility. To support that we have provided instructions on managing animations below.

Cookies

Necessary Cookies
Necessary cookies enable you to use all the different parts of leedsbeckett.ac.uk. Without them services that you have asked for cannot be provided. Necessary cookies can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
Analytical Cookies
Analytical cookies help us understand how people are using our websites, so we can improve them and provide a better user experience. We also sometimes get our approved partner companies to analyse how people are using Leeds Beckett Websites and they may set their own analytical cookies in order to do this.
Marketing Cookies
Marketing cookies allow us to provide you with online adverts that are the most relevant and useful for you.
For more information please view our Privacy Policy

Animations & Interaction

The Leeds Beckett University website occasionally uses animations to page elements and animated gifs to add impact to pages. If you wish to stop them from playing for accessibility purposes or for personal preference then please see the guidance below. Please note that browsers sometimes change how they operate, so please refer to your browser help files to find their latest information.
How do I turn off animations?

Chrome

Chrome users will need to use browser extensions. Animation Policy from Google will help you set your own preferences.

Microsoft Edge

There is currently no way to disable animations within Microsoft Edge. Users of Edge (Chromium) browser can install the Chrome extensions above and use them.

Internet Explorer

To stop animations on a single page you can just press the 'Esc' key. This will stop the animation on that page. If you wish to restart the animations you need to refresh the page. To permanently disable the playing of animated GIF images, open Internet Options > Advanced tab. Under the Multimedia section, uncheck the Play animations in webpage check-box, click Apply and Exit and then restart your computer.

Firefox

Type about:config in Firefox address bar and hit Enter to open Settings. Search for the image.animation_mode flag and change its value from Normal to None. Once you restart Firefox this will disable animations.

1969

Howard Wells OBE

Diploma in Physical Education Leader: Football

2025

Howard Wells OBE has dedicated over 50 years to the field of sport and recreation management. In 1969, he became the first Carnegie student to be elected President of the City of Leeds and Carnegie College Students’ Union. In 1979, he was appointed General Editor of Start Living Now (Lyric Books).

Over the course of his career, Howard has been chief executive of six different organisations and established four, whilst also acting as chairman or board member of others. From 1981 to 1989, he helped set up and served as CEO of the Hong Kong Sports Institute (formerly the Jubilee Sports Centre), receiving the Courvoisier Award for Business Excellence in Hong Kong in 1988. He became CEO of the Hong Kong Sports Development Board from 1989 to 1996, working alongside Sir William Purves CBE, DSO, Chairman of Hong Kong Bank, as his Non-Executive Chair.

Howard was the first CEO of UK Sport and later CEO of Watford Football Club and Ipswich Town FC, both clubs achieving Premier League status during his tenure, as well as Head of the Irish Football Association. He is a former senior coach of the FA and played and coached at Wycombe Wanderers FC.

He was elected to the Sport and Recreation Alliance board in 2000, serving as chair from 2001 to 2005, and completing his term as an Appointed Director in July 2016. In 2022, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Bucks New University. He currently serves as Chair of the Board, Verwood Town FC.
I enjoyed four excellent years as a student in Leeds, which was initially a bit of a culture shock, having grown up in a sleepy, small town in Hertfordshire. I recall it being foggy for over a month on arrival in 1966. Early on in term one, I was admitted to Leeds General Infirmary with appendicitis, which prevented my taking part practically until after Christmas. It gave me a break from Olympic Gymnastics and my tutor, George Whitely, who had told me that, “If I could not master the pommel horse, I could always get a job at Christmas delivering the mail.”

In year two, with seven other students, I was billeted with Mr and Mrs Broadbent in West Park. Three of the eight were Carnegie students. The Broadbents were regulars at the Olde Time Musical at the City Varieties.

Year three and we were in the Carnegie Hall of Residence. It was a good football year, as we had an outstanding college first team with local Peter Hardcastle, who went on to play for Blackpool, Welsh amateur international Geoff Anthony and Scottish junior international Kenny Richmond in the team. These were ably supported by Malcolm Hird, who had played for Farsley Celtic. We were ‘allowed’ to play against Loughborough Colleges that year, beating them 3-0 and 6-1, and enjoyed an excellent run in the FA Amateur Cup, beating Bellingham Synthonia 2-1 in the first round proper and losing 5-2 in round two to the eventual finalists, Sutton United. As a goalkeeper, I gifted the first goal and Don Curry, our tutor/coach never forgave me! At the end of that season the team went to Berlin and stayed at Spandau prison, where Rudolf Hess was an inmate. We listened to the final on the radio and Don said to me, “This could have been us.”

Our year group has met regularly since leaving. Our next gathering will be in Leeds in April 2026, sixty years since we got together.

Thumbnail for Howard Wells OBE Hall of Fame video

Yeah, my name's Howard Wells. My career has been in sport all my life.

I did a Bachelor of Ed degree at Leeds University in my 4th year with, along with the two or three that are here tonight. My career started in teaching, but I decided that wasn't really for me. So I got involved in further education in my, when I was 24 and I worked at a College of further Ed where I actually project managed and designed a community sports centre that got built, we got built in two and a half years. So I then felt having had a local experience, I needed a national one. So I then went and worked for six years as deputy director at Bism Abbey National Sports Centre, where I met everyone in sport that there was. And then from there I got headhunted by a guy who'd been appointed to set up an Olympic training centre in Hong Kong and I went out there to work with him in 1981. And so I project managed the building of 10 facilities in 10 Olympic sports and appointed coaches from all over the world in those ten sports. I took over as chief executive there in 1984 and did that for another five years. And then I set up a government quango in sport where I had a chairman who was the chairman of Hong Kong Bank as my chairman, who was the most outstanding man I've ever met in my life, and we had three and a half years together. He's still a good chum. He's 93 now. And from there I came back to England in 96 and set up UK Sport and then had three stints in professional football as chief executive at Watford when they got into the Premier League, Ipswich when they got into the Premier League and the Irish Football Association where I spent four years.

Sport's been very kind to me and in the context of this place, Bill Slater was a great friend of mine who was one of the guys who's now no longer with us. Bill was a student here from 1948 to 51, I think it was. I knew him very well and he told me a great story about being here in 1948 and having to get permission to miss lectures on a Saturday morning so he could go and play in the cup final for Blackpool against Manchester United. And he told me he travelled back on the train. Of course no one recognised him because in those days no television and no information about players, so they didn't know who he was. And the other person. Well a couple of others. But I met Ron Pickering was also a great friend of mine and sadly, and he came and did some work for us in Hong Kong on a consultancy basis and in fact stayed with me in Hong Kong the week before he came back and died sadly in 1991. But he was a big influence and an old student of this place and this place has always remained strong in my heart.

We have a number of regular get togethers from my year group. We've got another one coming up in April next year, which is going to involve some time here. And you know, the fact that people come along, we've got I think 22 guys coming to that and their partners from a year group of 60 years ago. So that's how much it means to us all.

I was bowled over really because, you know, I've done lots of things in my life and there are lots of people more worthy than I am. But sport's been my hobby. I made my hobby my job and as a consequence, you know, I've been around it. I still do quite a lot in sport, not full time, but it's been a major, major part of my life. And it's a privilege to be back here to see the amazing developments here really. And this is a, a secret that needs more broadly advertising. And I hope tonight's inductees will take that message out broadly because it's important that they do. You know, there are people here that I've, I know about that I've not worked with. And so it's interesting to see people like Julie Nelson here, who is in the Irish FA and I didn't, that was after my time, but really impressed to see her getting recognised in the Irish Football Association being recognised, which is very encouraging. And if you look at the diversity of people here tonight and their backgrounds, you know, it's encompassed a whole variety of different interests in sport and achievements in sport. And I think that's a strong message.