From Valleys prodigy to Man Utd... before life turned upside down
REWIND a decade and you’d be hard pressed to find a young football fan in the Rhondda who didn’t know the name Declan Dalley. This kid was going places.
News that he had signed for Manchester United had reverberated around the community. While a fertile ground for sporting greatness, it’s still not every day that happens deep in the heartlands of the Welsh valleys.
Dalley was a centre-back reared in Treherbert, having progressed through the Cardiff City academy from the age of eight, playing alongside the likes of future Wales internationals Declan John, Wes Burns and Tom Lockyer, but at 16 he decided to assess his options.
Dalley was, and still is, a huge United fan. When he learned they were interested in taking a look at him, he could scarcely believe it.
It held more poignancy with him, too, because his father, Michael, who was a lifelong Red, had passed away in 2007.
The defender was 16 when United came calling. It sounds a cliche, but for Dalley it really was a dream come true.
“I had a phone call to ask to go on trial at United,” he told our sister paper the South Wales Echo.
“I knew the scout a little bit because he always came to watch Cardiff games and Wales games, as well as some games for the Rhondda. He had been watching me since I was 12 but I was unaware.
“I was a United fan! I used to watch them home and away, go abroad. My mam and dad were there for the Treble (in Barcelona in 1999) and travelled the world watching them. They took me as well.
“It was crazy. There were about 13, 14 clubs in for me at the time. Some offered me contracts without a trial.
“Clubs like Celtic, they offered me a really good contract, so my agent told me to pick four clubs, so I picked United straight away. And I picked Everton, Birmingham and Ipswich. So I went to all of them. I had a trial game for United and they invited me back for the half-term week – I had to cancel my skiing trip! I had to go to Ipswich first, though, and caught food poisoning the week before my trial at United.
“I trained on the first day and then I was just spewing really badly. I thought that was my chance gone. But they offered me the chance to stay the following week, so I could start all over again. It was a mad, mad couple of weeks.
“I played a few more trial games for them, I was 16 at the time, and they went well. After my last trial game, after a couple of visits, they offered me a contract then.”
Playing with Pogba and Lingard
As ever with such fiercely proud and tight communities, Dalley, now 28, says he felt the weight of expectation from the goodwill of the people of the Rhondda, desperate for him to do well.
But he quickly realised the standard of football was a cut above what he had been exposed to up until that point. “I felt like I had a bit of catching up to do!” he remembers.
When he reels off the players he played alongside during those early days at United, though, you can see why he might have felt just a tad daunted by the bar which had been set.
“We had a really good team,” he recalls. “When I went on trial, I was with the youth team, so that was like Paul Pogba, Jesse (Lingard), all them lot! So that was a bit of a shock to the system to say the least, compared to what I was used to. Pogba was good, well, very good.
“Ravel Morrison, absolute joke, he was. Talent-wise, he was unbelievable. You’ve probably heard stories about him, I didn’t train that much with him, in all honesty, but he probably wasn’t around as much as he maybe should have been.
“(Adnan) Januzaj was always special. Our youth team was really good but he was next level within that.”
Working with Sir Alex
Not only was Dalley surrounded by top players, but the constant presence of Sir Alex Ferguson, a bona fide god of British football, was a frequent reminder of the uncompromising standards which were required of him. But the legendary manager was far less daunting than he anticipated.
“He would never pass anyone without saying hello and speaking to them. He was phenomenal. I spoke to him a couple of times over the years,” Dalley remembers of Ferguson.
“I remember him saying that I was really hard-working. Because I was in the gym a lot and he would pop into the gym and always see me doing something. I would do the assessments at the end of the year with Paul (McGuinness, youth-team manager) and he would say the boss had said how hard-working I was and always saw me doing things.
“They weren’t in-depth conversations, but he always asked how I was getting on. He always acknowledged you and knew everything about everyone.
“It’s a bit strange, because when he walked into a room, you knew he was there without even looking. But when he spoke to you, everyone always thinks about the hairdryer treatment, but he was always so nice and always had a joke with you. A completely different character to what you’re expecting. A phenomenal man.
“The scout who took me to United actually died a few years ago and he came down to the funeral and spoke at the funeral.”
He acknowledges that the bar had been raised and for him, it was sink or swim time. But he began to thrive. He played in the Victory Shield for Wales, had captained his country at agegroup level and was finding his feet.
“The standard was a lot higher than I was used to,” he adds. “But you do adapt to it and you’ve got to adapt quickly, you haven’t got a choice. It drags your level up, playing with better players.
“When I first got up there I did the medical but they told me I was injured. I didn’t play for six to eight weeks, but then I got into the swing of it and started to get to the level they were at and I did a lot better than I expected. The standard of football was frightening.”
Injury nightmare
Then, though, disaster struck. It was the first setback of an 18-month period of sheer hell and what sounds like torturous pain. Every footballer’s worst nightmare.
“I did my knee in Brazil, just before Christmas,” he remembers of that first year. “We were playing a tournament out there with Everton, Flamengo and other big clubs from all over the world.
“I did my ligaments, so I was out for almost a year. Then I came back and got a run of games together.
“I went away with Wales to Hungary in the Euro qualifiers, then I came back on the Wednesday, trained with United the next day, doing shape, preparing for an FA Youth Cup game, and my knee locked. I did my meniscus.
“I came back again, played one or two games and had to repair my meniscus again. The next time, I was out with the physio, running, wasn’t far off getting back playing and my knee had swollen. It went again. I had to have three repairs to my meniscus.
“Then, I had a popped blood vessel on the outside of my knee! It just kept swelling, even when I wasn’t doing anything! I was just sat in digs and my knee would just start to swell. No-one could figure out why it was happening.
“I had to have that capped off. But because of that, having so many operations in such a short space of time, I started having nerve problems. I had an injection in my spine to numb that, but I also had chronic pain then. There was no definitive moment. All of that happened to me within 18 months. It just spiralled.”
‘Difficult conversations’
United threw everything at the problem. They flew in Bill Knowles, renowned surgeon who has worked with some of the world’s top athletes, among other things to get his knee right. But as time wore on, Dalley, still a teenager at this point, knew difficult conversations lay ahead of him.
“Throughout all that, the club were getting me to do coaching badges. They were trying to prepare me for what was coming, really,” he says.
“The physio was a Welsh lad and he was really good. We had to have a couple of really honest conversations. He was saying to me, ‘If you call it a day now, you can live a normal life. Or, do you want to push on and things can take a turn for the worse?’
“They were hard conversations. At that point, you know it’s going one of two ways. But I didn’t know anything else. All I wanted to be was a footballer, that was my calling in life. But it just got to a point where we had done absolutely everything we could and we could do no more.”
He believes he became more resilient through dealing with the tragedy of his father passing when he was so young. But realising his dream was over? There’s no escaping just how difficult that was to cope with.
“Looking back, they were dark times,” he says. “I had prepared myself prior, I could see it was coming. It still didn’t make it any easier. But I did help myself in that way.
“I was only 19. It was a whirlwind three years, really. I am so grateful. I met some great people, travelled the world, but sometimes you look back and think, ‘Did that actually happen?’ It’s crazy now, looking back and reflecting on it.”
Return to the Rhondda
He returned to the Rhondda, his dream over. He admits he did nothing for months as United paid out the rest of his contract and he needed to “sort his life out”.
He finally got a job coaching at Cambrian & Clydach and stayed there for two-and-a-half years, but having been in the game since he was eight, he needed out.
“I left the coaching and my brother got me a job as a drainage engineer in Dyno-Rod. That was a massive wakeup call for me!” he laughs.
“I started there as a labourer, just digging for the repair team, then worked my way through that company to become a drainage engineer, a tanker driver, then went into the office as a technical manager.
“The people who own that company own another company called Suremark and they pinched me, so I’m at Suremark now. I’m a development manager for them. I absolutely love it. It’s been so good. I deal with environmental compliance, sustainability and facilities. I work for a lot of commercial clients. We do stuff for Morgan’s Arcade, St David’s shopping centre, Motorpoint, Principality Stadium, Glamorgan Cricket.
“There are three directors, and me, and one of the directors is actually chairman of Pontypridd United academy - so he is nagging me to get back involved in that. Maybe that’s a route back in.”
He has never played a game of football since leaving United at 19 and admits that he still has up and down days with his knee. But considering there was a time when he had to choose between his football career and potentially never walking again, it’s a small price to pay.
Happier than ever
That being said, when I ask how the knee is now, I’m stunned to hear the reply.
“I have just done Ironman!” he says. “All the boys keep nagging me now to go and play for the local teams!
“The knee isn’t great, I’ll be honest. But it’s a lot, lot better than when I first left. When I first left, I’d go shopping or be on my feet a lot, I’d definitely struggle that night and the next day.
“It’s a lot better now. I do have bad days now and again. I managed it through Ironman, my running wasn’t great because of my knee. But day to day, it’s fine.”
It might not have been the life he thought he was going to lead when he was flying up at Manchester United, but Dalley says he is happier than he has ever been.
Thousands of kids are put into football academies up and down the country every year and convince themselves that is how they will earn their living. It’s so rarely the case.
Declan is now married to Angelea and has a baby, Otis Michael Dalley, the middle name after his old man. He loves his job and his knee is good enough to walk his little boy around the local park. In that, he has found contentment in his new life.
“I got married 18 months ago,” he says.
“I have a baby, Otis, who is eight weeks old.
“You talk about finding happiness, you’ve just got to keep smiling. Things happen for a reason, you’ve got to move on and keep pushing on. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier. Home, wife, baby, a successful job, it’s all going really well.
“There were points after I left where my knee was in a bad way. You think, ‘Is this what the future looks like?’
“I was struggling day to day. A lot of young players have injuries, but there is more to life.
“Young footballers, make sure you enjoy yourself. Football gives you so much in terms of life lessons, shaping your character.
“I just think, take as much as you can from it. Meet with different people and stay connected to them.
“It’s a mad world, football, and it goes quickly. Such a small percentage of people make it.
“There are a lot of factors in making. The margins are so small and it’s so ruthless, you don’t realise until you’re involved in it.
“So just enjoy yourself, take what you can but be happy and keep smiling.”