“We Won Together – We Lost Together” – Dean Walling Interview

“He was my first ever coach.” Deano immediately questions me on the origin of the website name. It’s just a light hearted jest I tell him, and he proceeds to tell me about his time under Keith Mincher, “He was my coach in 1987 as a 16 year old at Leeds. Me, Gary Speed and David Batty, he was our coach. He was a big influence, one of those coaches who takes you, looks after you, and guides you. He was a good guy.”

Dean immediately strikes me as a positive, upbeat character ; the kind of man he portrayed both on and off the field at Brunton Park. He’s very eager to relive his glory days in Cumbria, the days he fondly recalls as ‘the best of his career’, and he immerses me in tales of his Carlisle United days.

He tells me of the opening day of the 1994/95 season, in which Wigan were the visitors to Brunton Park. ‘Deano’ managed to score a thumping header in front of the waterworks, a feat which was repeated many times throughout the season, “I guess my main strength was in the air, and when we got the good deliveries from Archdeacon and Currie, all I had to do was get a head on it. It helps hearing the Warwick chant ‘Deano! Deano!’ every time we got a set piece. I wanted to score for them.”

“We were all friends that year”, he tells me, “We won together, we lost together. The whole back four were best friends, we still keep in contact now. In fact, the entire squad do. It was my 40th a couple of years ago, and most the squad were there. It’s probably why we did so well that year, we were all best mates”

Perhaps it was team spirit that saw Carlisle experience such vast success that season, or perhaps it was the enigmatic Michael Knighton. Like most, Deano has his views on the man, “Everyone has different views on Michael, but he certainly put Carlisle on the map. We were on TV, at Wembley, on Football Focus, we were everywhere.”

Dean then reveals something that many a footballer is guilty of, “I had no idea where Carlisle was when I signed from Guiseley!” A forgiveable crime, but one that Knighton has surely lowered the chances of, “He certainly heightened the profile, he got the whole town buzzing. The players were mixing with the people of the town. He brought the club down, but you could never forget him.”

Dean then moves on to a more positive subject, the 1995 trip to Wembley, “I had been previously in 1990 with Guiseley for the FA Vase final, I even scored. It was different in ’95 though. It was a 78,000 sell out, and it just captivated the town. There were 26,000 Carlisle fans, and the town was deserted for the weekend. It couldn’t have been better.”

He then shows his softer side, with a touching tale, “It was one year to the day since my dad had died. It was really special for me, I wanted to go out and play for him. I knew he was watching.” Deano, always one to focus on the positive, doesn’t recount the defeat, instead saying, “I should have scored early on!”

Of course, in 1995 there was also the matter of the league title needing to be sown up. “We could have won it before Wembley, and we probably should have. We got a lot of draws after Wembley, and we should have wrapped it up a lot earlier than we did. We eventually won it away at Colchester, with a 1-0 win I believe.”

Deano then takes me through some of his personal highlights, which I’m sure will be shared with many fans, “We won 3-1 at Fulham, and that day we played fantastic football. Over the season we had played good football and scored lots of goals, but that day, we knew. We ripped Fulham apart. When we got back to the dressing room, me and Paul Conway turned to each other and said, ‘We’re f*cking good’. We knew that day that we would win the league.”

“It was the best season of my career.” Dean doesn’t even try to sugarcoat it, in fact he blurts it out several times over our conversation. “I won so many awards that season. I was the club’s Player of the Year, the Sunday Sun’s too, and I even got into the PFA Team of the Year. It was the best team, with the best players.”

We skipped over 1996, Deano preferred to talk about the good days, which returned in 1997, “It was more difficult that year, but the important thing was that we got promotion and went to Wembley again.”

I’m sure we all have our favourite Deano game, and he too was keen to share his, “Stockport away in the Auto Windscreens Shield Area Final. They absolutely battered us, but we held on for a 0-0 draw that took us to Wembley. I cleared two off the line – one an overhead kick- and it was my best game for Carlisle.”

After the promotion in 1997, things took a more sinister turn for Carlisle, and for Deano, “The chairman sacked Merv, and I knew then that it was only going one way.” A difficult choice then faced Dean, “I got a good offer from Lincoln, and the contract the Knighton offered me was crap. It was out of order, so I accepted the Lincoln offer. I rang up the chairman to say I was leaving, and he offered to match whatever Lincoln were giving me. I thought, why hadn’t he done this before?”

Had Walling’s thoughts on Knighton changed? Perhaps. But still, he could not utter a bad word about the man, “I had six good years at Carlisle, but it was time for a change.”

Deano then tells me of his spells at both Lincoln City and Doncaster Rovers, where managerial changes and the like limited to him to only numerous chances. Again though, Deano cannot speak badly of his time at either club, saying that Doncaster and Lincoln had, “Great sets of fans.”

But what happened after football for Deano? “I’m giving something back now, running soccer schools in Lincoln. We work with kids aged 4-14, and one lad has just be signed by the Aston Villa academy. I go into schools and run holidays camps too. We try to teach kids to play the right way.”

My brief conversation with Dean just epitomised his personality. He oozes positivity, so much so that it began to rub off on me. He was eager to talk, not only about his career, but about Carlisle’s current predicament. He hasn’t been to Brunton Park yet this season, but he’ll be back soon, he says.

We exchange words on Lee Miller, and the Colchester game on which he summarised for BBC Radio Cumbria, before he has some words for all Carlisle fans,

“Those Carlisle fans, they were the best in the world to me. Every corner they were urging me to score, and I wanted to score for them. After 15 years you think that they would forget me, but no. They don’t forget, and they always remember that I gave 110%. Thanks to all of them.”

And that was it. A brief chat it was, but I was humbled to be in the presence of such a Carlisle legend. Shortly after our conversation ended, a text from my dad read, ‘You’ll never beat Dean Walling’. He’s still there, 15 years on, in our hearts, being thought of fondly.

How we could really use a Deano right now.