‘If I’m playing well and I’m 41, who cares? If I’m not up to the level, fine’
Dean Lewington began his career with the Crazy Gang and is not slowing down for MK Dons, he tells
Dean Lewington made his first professional appearance as an 18-year-old in April 2003, a few months before the launch of MySpace and 938 games later (814 in the league) he is preparing for the League Two playoffs, as driven and professional as ever. Lewington, who turns 40 in a fortnight and remembers the days when away games meant the team bus stopping at Trowell services on the M1 to stock up on beers for the journey home, is not the type to follow social media trends. “I had a MySpace page, a very bad one … that was probably where I peaked,” the MK Dons captain says laughing.
Little did Lewington think when Wimbledon visited Sheffield Wednesday in Division One, the old second tier, that it would represent the first of his 22 seasons in the game while he is now expected to sign a new contract to carry on playing next season.
Last year, after his 771st league appearance for MK Dons – the club founded in 2004 after Wimbledon were relocated to Buckinghamshire – he surpassed John Trollope’s longstanding record for Swindon Town for the most league appearances for a single club. Before victory at Swindon in February, Lewington met the man whose record he eclipsed. “We got a knock on the changing-room door and he was outside,” the defender says. “It was a really nice moment.”
Lewington is fourth on the list of all-time English league appearances but walk into his house in Surrey and, he says, you would never know he has had an outstanding career in the game. Lewington is such a reluctant record-breaker, the running joke at the club is that there are unwanted mementos toasting various landmark achievements dotted around the stadium. Not fussed about a commemorative shirt to mark his 600th appearance, in 2019, it remains in the car boot of a former employee.
“I keep a shirt from every season, including some of the away ones, so I have about 30 in the loft,” he says. “Apart from that, any trophies are at mum and dad’s. I was never interested in swapping shirts; when we played Chelsea, my mate is a Chelsea fan so asked me to get one and I swapped with Willian. But it wasn’t for myself, I gave it away straight away.”
He is self-deprecating and down to earth but a fiercely-competitive
‘I introduced him just as my dad [Ray] ... Matty came up to me and said: ‘Your dad knows his stuff’
character. Aaron Wilbraham, a former teammate and friend, describes him, affectionately, as the world’s worst loser. Pace has never been Lewington’s forte but he has long been a master when it comes to positioning, a mind-reader of sorts.
Still, that hasn’t stopped opponents identifying him as a perceived weak link on the basis of the mileage in his legs. “I know speaking to managers and coaches after games, they have said they made a point of saying: ‘He’s X years old, he’s not as quick as he was.’ If they have targeted it, it’s not really come off for them.”
Lewington’s father, Ray, the former England assistant manager who retired this year after leaving Crystal Palace with Roy Hodgson, helped him out on the couple of occasions he has been placed in caretaker charge of the club. The second time, in December 2022, not everyone realised his dad was more than qualified to do so. “I introduced him as just my dad, because I thought everyone knew. Halfway through the session [striker] Matty Dennis came up to me and said: ‘Your dad knows his stuff, doesn’t he? I thought he was a taxi driver or something.’”
In many ways, Lewington is a great survivor given the churn of players across the pyramid. Incredibly, the only MK Dons manager not to play Dean Lewington? Lewington himself. He is also the only player to wear their No 3 shirt, leading supporters to wonder whether, one day, the club will retire it. “It’s very American, isn’t it?”
There are weekly reminders of quite how long Lewington has been in the business. He recalls the “Ex-Files” feature in the matchday programme that used to spotlight former players, every one of whom he has played alongside. Then there are the blank looks he gets from teenage teammates when he tells how Rotherham have not always played at the New York Stadium or of Peter Ndlovu’s brilliance for Coventry. “They have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says.
Lewington says never missing training is the closest thing to a secret behind his longevity. “As I’ve got older, managers will say have a day off or don’t always do the afternoon sessions. But I found that more of a hindrance.”
Mike Williamson, the 40-year-old who took charge in October after impressing in his first management job at Gateshead, puts it succinctly. “He’s a phenomenon, isn’t he? I could be standing here in 10 years and he’ll probably still be here”.
Unsurprisingly, there is no extravagant 40th bash on the horizon – but for good reason. The League Two playoff final is on 19 May, the day after Lewington’s birthday, and if MK Dons prevail against Crawley over two legs, the first of which is tomorrow in Sussex, they will reach the Wembley finale. Promotion, he says, “would be a nice present.”
Lewington has straddled different eras of the game, having tasted the back end of the Crazy Gang culture at Wimbledon when the team played cards on the bus and pranks translated to “a lot of nudity”.
Times have changed – Diet Coke has replaced beer en route home from an away win, for starters – but Lewington is determined to be judged now just as when he was the ginger-haired teenage full-back breaking through the youth team at Wimbledon. “If I’m playing rubbish, I’m playing rubbish, I don’t deserve to play, it shouldn’t be: ‘You’re playing rubbish and you’re 39,’” he says.
“If I’m playing well and I’m 41, who cares? If I’m not up to the level or people don’t think I deserve to be playing, that’s fine, but it should be based on my performance, not my age. When that happens, I suppose you’ll know and it will be time to go.”