We caught up with Mark Dacey - the latest addition to the Dulwich Hamlet coaching team

Dulwich Hamlet have appointed Mark Dacey as a first team coach.

Dacey joins us from Cray Wanderers, where he worked across the youth setup and enjoyed a great track record of bringing through young players. “I've been coaching for about 13 or 14 years,” he said. “I started at Bromley, spent 8 years there, and then the last three years at Cray Wanderers. I had the same team as a manager from Under 9s to Under 18, but we were Under 23s last year.”

Dacey’s Under 18 side reached the Second Round of the FA Youth Cup, the furthest Cray had ever been in the competition. “We got to the Second Round of the FA Youth Cup, where we got beat by Portsmouth and we would've had Liverpool, whoever won that round,” Dacey explains. “They ended up going on to win it.”

During his time at Cray, 14 of his youth players went on to feature for the first team and two were even snapped up by professional clubs. “Two are currently still with pro clubs - Kwame Poku who's at Colchester and Joseph Wright's at Millwall,” Dacey says. “A lot of the others did brilliant, they went, got released and pretty much all of them ended up coming so it was nice for us to push them on and nice for them to come back when it didn't quite work out for them.”

Having made the move up to men’s management this summer to become assistant manager at Barking FC, Dacey couldn’t turn down the opportunity when a chance to start work with Dulwich came up a couple of months ago. He cites the fanbase and the management team as the key reasons for this.

“I honestly think that with my role that I had at Barking, even though my work commitments changed so it was becoming difficult to commit there, this would've only ever been the other club that I would've contemplated leaving to come to anyway.”

“Obviously the fans are a massive part of it and the numbers, the whole setup. I don't think you're going to learn off many better than Gavin and Junior.”

Dacey also feels he can learn a lot from the other coaches at Dulwich. “Junior James too has been fantastic. I've known him for a number of years through youth football, and what he's doing outside of Dulwich, and Tamba as well. He's now with the young kids and is going to be bringing them through. My role's just to be a part of that and hopefully we can grow and push the club up the leagues, whatever part they want me to play.”

Speaking on his appointment, manager Gavin Rose said, “Mark was headhunted by myself after watching him coach at Bromley & Cray. I liked his philosophy and his enthusiasm to better himself and others. As time goes on, I’d like to ingrain him in the coaching group with the players that are in between the first team and the Academy to aid there pathway.”

Everyone at the club would like to wish Mark all the best at Dulwich Hamlet.