BENARTY'S Citizens of the Year both have strong football connections.

Citizen of the Year Wattie Moodie has been a stalwart in the amateur ranks for almost half a century while the Young Citizen of the Year, Lucy Graham, is a real Scottish international prospect.

The two of them were presented with their awards at a special evening held at Lochore Bowling Club by Benarty Community Council.

Wattie is a Lochgelly man and started his football career as a youngster with Gasworks FC in 1972 playing in the Dunfermline Sunday League and he soon moved to Ballingry where he played with clubs who played under different names.

They were based at King George's Park in Crosshill and when he gave up playing he became manager and served in that role for over 20 years.

His team is now known as Lochore Castle and they just recently moved to the re-born Dallas Doyle Park, in Ballingry.

Wattie's wife Margaret is treasurer of the Castle club and she helps Wattie make sure that everything is running smoothly at Dallas Doyle.

On a national scene the 65 year-old has served on the SFA Welfare Executive and in total completes 45 years in football this week.

The woodwork craftsman worked for some years at Rainbow Crafts at BRAG and also at the Cartmore Training Centre.

Wattie was shocked to get the award: "It came right out of the blue.

"Lochore Castle have been having a pretty good season and are lying fifth in the league with games in hand over the teams above us so we would hope to finish in the top three at least.

"It has been good to move to Dallas Doyle Park and get football back at a really nice ground while the Ballingry community have really got behind us."

The one thing that has disappointed Wattie is the number of amateur and Sunday teams that have gone out of existence in recent years.

Meanwhile Lucy Graham has make great strides since starting playing football at primary school and played for Dunfermline's girls team until she was 14.

She then spent two seasons with Forfar Farmington and made such an impact there she was signed by Hibernian Ladies.

She has won the Scottish Cup and League Cup with the Hibees and her performances have seen her play for Scotland at various age levels and has been the Scots' under 19s captain. Lucy is now looking to break-into the full Scotland squad.

Special awards also went to Benarty Events Group and Laura Dickson, who organised a film show in Lochore Institute.

Community Council chairman Stevie Nardone said: "Our winners this year are people who have done so much to take the name of Benarty forward so prominently.

"We congratulate them and thank those people who sent us the nominations for the awards which were of the highest quality."