An interview with: Danny Kedwell

Last week I sat down with Cray Wanderers manager Danny Kedwell to find out why he took his first steps into management and his plans for the future after leaving Hayes Lane:

TK: How did you end up taking the Cray Wanderers job?

DK: Gary Hillman the chairman of Cray approached me after someone else had put my name forward to him. The very least I was going to do was have a chat about the job but it appealed to me massively.

TK: Were there any second thoughts given you needed to completely rebuild the squad?

DK: No, I liked the idea of the challenge, a chance to put my own stamp on the job from the very beginning, something that was very exciting to me.

TK: Having had such a good career within the game as a player was it easier to persuade players to come and play for you?

DK: No, not really. I liked the conversations I was having to try and get players in during that transition period with a lot of players coming in and other shipping out, I felt I was very close to getting what we needed to be able to stay in the division.

I didn’t feel I got enough time, if it had been said to me at the beginning you need to build a full squad and you need to be right in the thick of it at the top end of the table after 19 games I wouldn’t have taken the job.

TK: You’ve played under some very good managers in your career, have you taken a little something from all of them and adapted it a bit to how you coach and manage?

DK: Yeah, I’ve taken from a couple of them but more off the pitch stuff which I found helped me when I was playing and I hope the players did benefit from it for the time I was there.

TK: How did you find fitting in the work as a Step 4 manager around the day job at Ebbsfleet Academy?

DK: It worked quite well actually as the academy work was all in the mornings so that left me free to concentrate on the job at Cray and made it easier to get away for midweek games as well.

TK: We met after the Horsham game when you won 3-0 and things looked to have turned a corner then but the change didn’t materialise. How disappointed were you that it didn’t work out at Hayes Lane with Cray Wanderers?

DK: I’d like to think it was about to happen. I found it disappointing I only got 19 games after building a brand new squad that needed time to gel and for players to be added all the time to improve things. I felt we were very close to that corner being turned, we were playing some good football as you saw in that Horsham game and we were dominating games, the results don’t show that.

TK: And now onto Chatham in the thick of a title challenge in the Southern Counties East League, was it important to you to get into a club where there was something to play for this season and to keep you mentally tuned?

DK: No, not really. It didn’t really come into my mind and wasn’t even thinking about the next steps when the call came so it was a bit of a shock. They’ve a great set-up though and it was where my football journey began so a little bit of a no-brainer to head back there.

TK: Should another offer come along to return to the dug-out before the season ends, will Danny Kedwell be back on the touchline or some time out until the summer?

DK: I’m biding my time; the next offer and club has to be right so I’m not going to rush in and take the first job that’s offered to me. But I definitely want another crack at it in the near future.

My thanks to Danny for his time.