I miss the passion of lower league football. It’s why I want to manage there ... not the Prem
IT’S fair to say that as a football player Julian Dicks was one of the most uncompromising competitors of them all.
He was a fierce full-back who became a West Ham cult hero because of his thunderous left foot and fondness for a full-blooded tackle – earning himself the nickname ‘The Terminator’.
And age has done little to dilute the passion that prompted Graeme Souness to sign him for Liverpool in 1993 – in a last throw of the dice to save the Scot’s job at Anfield.
Dicks is 52 now and five months ago he became a father for the third time, when daughter Eliyanah was born.
Since leaving West Brom’s coaching staff six weeks ago – as collateral damage in Slaven Bilic’s brutal sacking – Dicks has begun to pine to revisit his non-league roots, rather than return to the Premier
League. He said: “The way it ended at West Brom shows you just how cruel the game has become.
“We got a 1-1 draw at Manchester City – one of the best teams in the world, never mind the Premier League – but a day later Slaven was out the door and his coaching staff followed.
“I wouldn’t say it left me disillusioned because we always knew how hard it was going to be to stay in the division, and what the price would be for losing games.
“But it did confirm to me that if I was going to return to the game then it had to be for job satisfaction – and that means going back into non-league.
“I’ve had a crack at it before. I won promotion with Heybridge Swifts in 2019, but we were prevented from taking up a place in the Isthmian League Premier when they changed the rules.
“And my dad Ron played and managed at clubs around the Bristol area like Frome Town, Tiverton and Weymouth.
“So in a way, football at that level is in my blood. In non-league players have really got to motivate themselves.
“They have to have the hunger to do a shift on a building site or in a factory and then turn up for training every Tuesday and Thursday night.
“It’s probably the purest form of the game because it’s about your love of football and perhaps earning yourself a bit of beer money.
“Even when I was going to places like Old Trafford, the Etihad and St James’ Park, I missed the passion and the camaraderie of the people I’d left behind.”
Dicks was as a teenager at Birmingham when West Ham boss John Lyall looked past the fact that the young man had been sent off once and booked 33 times in just four years, and made a £300,000 swoop.
The defender’s 11 years at Upton Park (right) came in two spells and brought four player of the year awards. In between there was that ill-fated move to Liverpool.
Dicks made just 28 appearances for the Reds before returning to Upton Park, yet Souness still rates him as one of the best players he worked with at Anfield.
Today Jurgen Klopp’s stars head to the London Stadium with David Moyes’ Irons just two
points behind them in the table. Dicks said: “I spent the best years of my career at West Ham and it’s great seeing them doing so well.
“Moyes is showing again what a good manager he is after taking on that impossible job trying to replace Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.
“Playing Liverpool will be a big test of how far West Ham have progressed – Klopp has turned them back into the club they were in the 1980s when they would batter teams.
“Back in 1993, when I moved there, they had only gone a few years then without winning the title.
“I didn’t want to leave West Ham but couldn’t turn down one of the biggest clubs in the world and the chance to play with players like John Barnes, Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler.
“It just wasn’t a good fit – and when I returned to West Ham it was like going home again.
“I don’t have regrets. I’m proud to say that I was a Liverpool player. I scored the last goal at the Kop end before they tore down the old terrace. So I got a little bit of history too.”