Portadown Football Club is delighted to announce Dean Bunting as our new U18 manager, replacing the outgoing Ben Anderson.
A well-known figure in local football, Dean played for Portadown across his youth days through to U18s before stepping into a successful 20+ year senior career with Hanover, after which he made his first steps into management with Portadown BBOB where he transformed the club from a Division 1 side into league winners, going on to establish them as a solid Intermediate B club.
Dean brings a wealth of passion and drive for developing young talent, making him the ideal leader for our promising U18 squad.
On Dean’s appointment Head of NIFL phase, Chris Wright commented
We’re thrilled to welcome Dean to our club after pursuing him for over a year. His impressive record at BBOB showcases his coaching expertise and ability to develop squads and gives him the ideal foundations in coaching to step into the NIFL phase.
His knowledge, passion, and drive make him the perfect fit to develop our young and exciting U18 squad. Dean’s ability to inspire and connect with players, while fostering a positive, high-energy environment, ensures he’s the right person to guide our U18 team forward as well as assist across the phase and we can’t wait to see him get started!
On taking over the young Ports and the task ahead for the upcoming season, Dean added
I’m really looking forward to getting involved with the squad. Chris has been in contact since the end of last year in regards to coming on board so the seed had been set long ago. A year in football is a very long time and taking my break from senior football, of course the first message I seen was from Chris reading “do we need a chat mate” so he didn’t let it go.
His interest in me getting involved was something that certainly got me thinking again. I have seen quite a bit of the U18s over the previous two seasons, mainly because of the Friday night availability, they’re a great team to watch with loads of energy and I know the next squad stepping up have ended their season on a positive so it will be great to see how they adapt to this challenge.
Lastly, Portadown played a huge part in my career and how I developed as a player, I played right through from U11s to U18s and had lots of success, mainly Harry Cavan Cup finalists. So how important I am to each individual in the squad is huge and I hope as a coach I can be judged on how many players I see improve as players for this club and also become better people in life.
