Dean Williams (born 5 January 1972) is an English former

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who played as a

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

. He made nearly 100 appearances in

the Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional association football, football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in Association football around the wor ...

playing for

Birmingham City Birmingham City Football Club is a professional association football, football club based in Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, it was renamed Small Heath in 1888, Birmingham in 1905, and Birmingham City in 1943. Sin ...

, Brentford and

Doncaster Rovers Doncaster Rovers Football Club is a professional association football club based in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. The team compete in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. The club play their home games at ...

, and represented

Welsh Premier League The Cymru Premier, known as the JD Cymru Premier for sponsorship reasons, is the national football league of Wales. It has both professional and semi-professional status clubs and is at the top of the Welsh football league system. Prior to 20 ...

clubs TNS in the

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay ...

and

Aberystwyth Town Aberystwyth Town Football Club ( cy, Clwb Pêl-Droed Tref Aberystwyth) is a Welsh semi-professional football team, currently playing in the Cymru Premier, the top tier of football in Wales. They are the only top flight men's football team in Ce ...

in the

Intertoto Cup The UEFA Intertoto Cup (from la, Inter, 'between' + german: toto, 'betting pool'),Most precisely, from ( football pool); cf. often abbreviated and more known in the German-speaking world as UI Cup and originally called the International Foo ...

Playing career

Williams, born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, signed for

on schoolboy forms at 14. When he left school in 1988, he was accepted as a trainee under the

Youth Training Scheme The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) was the name in the United Kingdom of an on-the-job training course for school leavers aged 16 and 17 and was managed by the Manpower Services Commission. The scheme was first outlined in the 1980 white paper ''A Ne ...

(YTS) system and turned professional in 1990. He made his first-team debut aged 17 at the end of the 1989–90 season, in a 2–1 defeat at home to

Notts County Notts County Football Club is a professional association football club based in Nottingham, England. The team participate in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system. Founded on the 25 November 1862, it is the ...

. A spell on loan in Republic of Ireland with

Cobh Ramblers Cobh Ramblers Football Club (CRFC) ( ga, Cumann Peile Chóstóirí Chóbh) is an Irish football club. The club, founded in 1922 and elected to the League of Ireland in 1985, hails from Cobh, County Cork and play their home matches at St. Colm ...

followed in 1991. Birmingham used five different goalkeepers, including Alan Miller and

Kevin Dearden Kevin Charles Dearden (born 8 March 1970) is an English former professional footballer who made more than 400 appearances in the Football League, playing as a goalkeeper for many clubs. He later became a coach, and is currently goalkeeper coac ...

on loan from Arsenal and

Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. The team has playe ...

respectively, during the 1991–92 season, but Williams was not one of those five; he was released in March 1992 and joined Tamworth. Williams played for Brentford in the 1993–94 season before joining

in August 1994. He spent three seasons with the club, making nearly 100 first-team appearances, before moving on to Gateshead in late 1997. Released by the club at the end of the 1997–98 season following their relegation from the Conference, he joined Telford United in August 1998. He made 90 appearances for the club before joining

club Total Network Solutions (TNS) in 2001. In nearly three seasons with TNS, Williams played 72 games in all competitions, including representing the club in the

2003–04 UEFA Cup The 2003–04 UEFA Cup was won by Valencia in the final against Marseille. It wrapped up a league and UEFA Cup double for Valencia. Porto could not defend their title as they automatically qualified for the 2003–04 UEFA Champions League and a ...

, conceding only twice in the second leg of the qualifying round against Manchester City at the Millennium Stadium. After a dispute with the club's management, Williams' contract was terminated. He had planned to take TNS to an

employment tribunal Employment tribunals are tribunal public bodies in England and Wales and Scotland which have statutory jurisdiction to hear many kinds of disputes between employers and employees. The most common disputes are concerned with unfair dismissal, red ...

, but the parties reached a financial agreement before the hearing. He signed for

, playing in the

2004 UEFA Intertoto Cup The 2004 UEFA Intertoto Cup football finals (the summer football competition for European clubs that had not qualified for one of the two major UEFA competitions) were won by Lille, Schalke 04, and Villarreal. All three teams advanced to the ...

against

Dinaburg Daugavpils (; russian: Двинск; ltg, Daugpiļs ; german: Dünaburg, ; pl, Dyneburg; see other names) is a state city in south-eastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. The parts of the ...

and keeping a clean sheet in the first leg, and also played six games in the Welsh Premier League, before moving on in September 2004 to

Forest Green Rovers Forest Green Rovers Football Club are a professional football club based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, England. The team compete in , the third tier of the English football league system, and have played their home games at The New Lawn since ...

, for whom he played 23 games in the Conference. Williams then moved on to Stafford Rangers, helping them to runners-up spot in the Conference North and promotion via a

man-of-the-match In team sport, a player of the match or man of the match or woman of the match award is often given to the most outstanding player in a particular match. This can be a player from either team, although the player is generally chosen from the winn ...

performance in the play-off final in which he saved

Droylsden Droylsden is a town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, east of Manchester city centre and west of Ashton-under-Lyne, with a population at the 2011 Census of 22,689. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, in the ...

's first kick in the

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

. He played nine times for the club in the Conference before retiring at the age of 35 due to injury.

Later career

Williams joined Telford United as a part-time goalkeeping coach in 2008. In 2014, he was head goalkeeping coach at a Tamworth-based academy.

References

External links

* * (Forest Green appearances) {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Dean 1972 births Living people Footballers from Tamworth, Staffordshire English men's footballers Men's association football goalkeepers Birmingham City F.C. players Cobh Ramblers F.C. players Tamworth F.C. players Brentford F.C. players Doncaster Rovers F.C. players Huddersfield Town A.F.C. players Gateshead F.C. players Telford United F.C. players Stafford Rangers F.C. players Aberystwyth Town F.C. players English Football League players Cymru Premier players The New Saints F.C. players Forest Green Rovers F.C. players