An interview with Dave Challinor, by Callum McFadden for WFi.
You came into professional football via a slightly different route, going to college before signing for Tranmere. Looking back now, and considering everything that followed, how do you reflect on your playing career?
“It feels like a long time ago now, so it is difficult reflecting back on it, I suppose.
“Growing up, I always wanted to be involved in football. I don’t think you ever, certainly I didn’t, imagine that you’re going to be a footballer for as long as I was, but I had a really good time.
“I spent a long time at Tranmere, around nine years. I did things slightly differently in terms of going to college, doing my A-levels and then signing professional straight away, so I came through a different way.
“In terms of what we achieved, getting to the League Cup final was probably the highlight. It was a brilliant time at Tranmere. Obviously, getting to the League Cup final, having some brilliant nights in the FA Cup and beating some Premier League teams were all fantastic experiences.
“I then moved to Stockport when they were still in the Championship at the time, although they were relegated, so it was a sort of fresh start, really.
“I then had six good years at Bury with Graham Barrow and some other managers.
“I played some Championship games. You always want to play as high as possible, and I probably maximised my ability massively. I would have loved to have gone on longer, but I picked up an injury towards the end of my career.
“I hadn’t really had loads of injuries, but an injury at the end of my career forced me to go and play part-time.
“In hindsight, though, it was probably the best thing that happened because it led me into the management stuff.”
So the end of your playing career, while frustrating at the time, ultimately opened the door to the second chapter of your career. Was becoming a manager something you had already started preparing for?
“I always wanted to stay in football.
“While I was playing, I did a physio degree. I was one of those people who loved the environment of the dressing room and wanted to stay involved in some capacity.
“I wanted to give myself as many opportunities as possible to do that because I suppose the opportunities to manage can be slim and few and far between to a certain extent.
“Getting that opportunity sometimes is difficult, so I wanted to try and give myself as many chances as I could.
“I was playing part-time at Colwyn Bay because my mate was the manager there. At the time, I was still applying for jobs and seeing what would come about.
“He then got the opportunity to go to Chester, where it was sort of reborn as a new club.
“The opportunity was there for me to either go with him and carry on playing, or I was offered the role at Colwyn Bay to manage.
“I took that, and that was the first step into management.”
You were player-manager at Colwyn Bay. Did management feel natural to you from the beginning, or was it something you had to learn as you went?
“Yeah, again, I suppose it came from the dressing room that I grew up in football-wise.
“Back in those days it was pretty brutal at times.
“In the position I played, I naturally had to communicate and be a bit of a leader, which obviously the course of my career helped with.
“I suppose you’ll always have views on what you want the game to look like.
“The big thing for me is around the communication part of things and how you can step into a dressing room.
“I think then you have to learn on the job in terms of putting teams together in order to try and be successful. That’s been different at every club I’ve been at, really.
“If you go back to when I started at Colwyn Bay, the majority of people within that squad were players I’d played with the year before and were almost teammates and mates.
“You try and use the connections you’ve got to get players in that you know, that you know what they can do and that you can trust.
“That then becomes more difficult when you go to different clubs that are in different parts of the country and you’ve got to go a different way about it.
“Over 15 or 16 years, you pick up all of the experience you need to allow yourself to do that.”
Your time at AFC Fylde was the first major indication of what you could build as a manager. You were there for eight or nine years, experienced the club’s rise, won the National League North and the FA Trophy, and consistently competed for promotion. What did that period teach you about management?
“It was really good, and probably gave me an insight into what management really was.
“I came out of Colwyn Bay after we’d just got promoted and stepped down two divisions because of what Fylde were looking to do.
“The chairman had put a plan in place when he took over the club in 2007 to try and get to the Football League by 2022, so it was a 15-year plan.
“Everything was being set up. There was the scope of a new stadium, turning into a full-time football team and understanding how that would progress.
“I don’t think at the time you expect to go somewhere and maybe be somewhere for eight years.
“But I sort of grew with the club, or went on that journey, and that journey coincided with me becoming a much better manager and a much more rounded manager, being involved in everything that I needed to be involved in.
“It gave me the experience of all those things. So, yeah, brilliant.
“I had some great success, made some great people that I’m still in contact with, and it set me up for what I did after that.”
Leaving Fylde meant taking another calculated step, this time to Hartlepool United. They were a former Football League club in the National League, and you eventually took them back into the EFL. What made that move important for you?
“The move was important for me because, again, I suppose at every point in football you can be somewhere too long, and we’ll get on to speaking about Stockport.
“That was the point where I probably needed a challenge.
“Fylde was brilliant. We got to a play-off final and obviously got beaten by Salford at the end of the 2018/19 season.
“If we’d got to the Football League, we’d have completed what the plan was three years early.
“But for me, to go to a big football club, if you like, with a historical fan base and a desire to get that back was something that really interested me.
“It coincided with COVID, which was tough, but Hartlepool was amazing, especially once we got through the back end of the COVID period.
“We got promoted at Ashton Gate in the play-off final by beating Torquay United on penalties, which was an amazing feeling, especially as we had just started to get the supporters back in the stands.
“The atmosphere, and I suppose the connection I had with them and that part of the country, was amazing.
“I look back really, really fondly on all of my managerial stuff, but especially that.
“I’m still in a WhatsApp group with all the guys who were our coaching staff. Lots of the players that were there with us are now at Football League clubs.
“So, yeah, a really, really good time and, thankfully, some success at a club that hadn’t had it for a while.”
Hartlepool had been out of the Football League for four years, and your promotion made you hugely popular with the supporters. When Stockport came calling, was there a feeling that the opportunity was simply too good to turn down, particularly given your history with the club?
“Yeah, I think there was a little bit of unfinished business as a player, certainly.
“I’d gone to Stockport at the end of the January window in 2001, I think, and the club were on 20-odd points and already relegated. They got relegated in February, so it was a sort of reset moment for what was to come.
“They went into League One looking to potentially build.
“I think, as with all football clubs, when they potentially get relegated, the hope to bounce back and rebuild can be looked at too quickly.
“We had some really good players at Stockport who went on to play in the Premier League and got sold for a lot of money.
“But it was a young team. I was 26 or 27, I was the oldest one, and that needed time.
“You don’t get time in football, so there was always a part of me that, if that opportunity did come up, wanted to go and right a few wrongs.
“But I’d also been away from home for a couple of years at Hartlepool. My family was still based in the North West.
“There were conversations at that time about whether we could all move up to the North East.
“My eldest son was going to Durham University and my youngest could have had a scholarship at a club in North Yorkshire, so we could have moved.
“But the owner didn’t want to commit to a contract that would allow me to sort of up sticks and go to Hartlepool.
“Although I was happy there, it was the first time I’d ever been a Football League manager, having earned it.
“When Stockport did come about, and obviously knowing what they were looking to do, everything made sense.
“The plan of wanting to invest in the squad, the fact that I could be back in the North West, and obviously the righting of the wrongs of being there as a player and the opportunity to go back there and be more successful as well than it was the first time round.”
You were leaving the Football League to return to the National League. Was there any apprehension about taking that step backwards on paper?
“There was absolutely apprehension because I’d been doing it for 10 years and no one had ever given me a Football League job. I’d had to earn it.
“I think you’ll always have confidence in your ability. I suppose I took comfort in the fact that I’d done it before when I moved from Colwyn Bay to Fylde and dropped down a couple of divisions.
“Did I expect that after five years at Stockport, we’d have won two league titles, got beaten in two finals and got beaten in a semi-final the other year?
“Absolutely not. But I knew that the squad that was there in the National League certainly was better than anything else that was in the National League.
“They’d had a little bit of a sticky start, a sticky run, if you like, and were sitting mid-table.
“Even worst-case scenario, I felt that we could get in the play-offs that year and we’d have a chance of getting promoted, which we obviously did better than that.
“So, there was certainly a lot of thinking and a lot of conversations that went on as to whether it was the right or wrong thing to do at the time.
“The connection I had with the supporters at Hartlepool made it more difficult.
“But I think, from a selfish perspective, it turned out better than I could have imagined.”
It turned out spectacularly well. You took Stockport from ninth to National League champions, then won League Two within two years, giving the club its first EFL league title in more than 60 years. Was there a point where you realised this could become something much bigger than simply getting Stockport promoted?
“The club was really proud of a record going back before I went there of always finishing higher for 12 consecutive seasons than the previous season.
“We continued that for five years, obviously finishing first twice, third twice and fourth in our first year in League Two.
“We finished one place outside the play-offs and obviously lost the play-off final to Carlisle. So, no, there were amazing achievements.
“I don’t think you appreciate how quickly things happen. Even when you do win a league title, the next aim for us, especially at a club like Stockport because the plan was to try and get to the Championship, was, ‘Right, what’s next?’
“But I take real pride in the fact that we were able to do it at a different level on the occasions that we did step up.
“Again, that’s down to the infrastructure that was in place at Stockport, the support staff that we had and the infrastructure that allows you to do that.”
The final chapter at Stockport ended with a play-off defeat. Having experienced both sides of those games throughout your career, how difficult is it to accept when everything you’ve worked towards comes down to one afternoon and doesn’t go your way?
“Yeah, it’s always difficult.
“I’ve been there, won them, lost them, won on penalties, lost on penalties. It has everything.
“I think all you can do, certainly from a team perspective, is understand that it’s great to compete and it’s great to win, but at the back end, those games do become a toss of a coin around what happens on the day.
“What things go in your favour? What goes against you? Do the players perform? Do the opposition players perform better?
“There are so many variables involved. Those games, because the teams are so closely matched, in my eyes are a flip of a coin.
“Unfortunately, on that occasion, we ended up on the wrong side of the result, and that probably dictated where everybody’s thoughts were on whether it was time for me to have a change and look at what’s next.
“I think sometimes you can overstay your welcome, but to take the club from where we were in the National League to one step away from the Championship is something that I’m really, really proud of.
“It’s also about understanding when you do maybe need to look at what’s next and be excited about what comes next.”
Your managerial record speaks for itself. You’ve never had a win rate below 46 per cent, and you’ve averaged around 53 per cent across your four jobs. At this stage of your career, what does the next challenge look like? Are you open to Scotland, working abroad or are you determined to get back into the EFL?
“I’m open to anything, to be perfectly honest.
“There were things happening probably with Simon Wilson moving on to Stockport and the owner before the end of the season.
“If we’d got promoted and got to the Championship, then that probably, again, would have been my next challenge.
“It would have been probably the lowest budget in the Championship, but trying to get Stockport, or give Stockport, the opportunity of staying in there.
“I’ve done it at sort of every level from step four in non-league in this country all the way up, and it would be great to have that opportunity.
“But I’m also realistic around what might come next. I wouldn’t say no to anything, whether that was in this country, in a different country, abroad, whatever it might be.
“I think you take every offer or opportunity on its merits and see how that stacks up with what we want to achieve next.
“I’ve got a really good team that I’ve worked with previously who have come with me, so we’re all really, really eager to get back in.
“But it’s important that we get in with the right place and the right opportunity because we’ve made a choice to step away from a really good club.
“It would be daft to jump in, and we won’t jump in at the first opportunity.
“It has to be the right opportunity, however long that might take.”
You’ve also built a coaching team that has evolved alongside you. How important is that collective, and how different is the manager you are today from the one who first walked into Colwyn Bay?
“I’ve learned loads. I think it’s important within a team that you have around you to cover every base.
“I’m not big on hierarchy around me being the manager and whatever I say goes sort of thing. I think it’s important that you have all personalities that tick boxes because I need to be authentic to me. Sometimes that can be by being grumpy.
“Some other people will have to take up the slack of being the energetic and the fun ones. I’m still going to be really demanding of players.
“I take a real pride in the fact that wherever I’ve been and whatever level it’s been at, we’ve been able to win, and that’s what I want to do. But in order to do that, you need to have lots and lots of different strings to your bow.
“Football has changed in the 15 years I’ve been involved in management.
“Undoubtedly, although I’ve not experienced it, when you do step up into the Championship and see how players can be, you do have to adapt to what is in front of you and the situation you find yourself in.
“Whether you’re going in at a certain time of the year, whether a team might be struggling or whether they’re on a high, there are lots of different bits that come into it.
“We’ll all have a blue-sky-thinking way that we want to play. If we can win in that way, then brilliant. But for me, it’s about being adaptable and trying to win in whatever way the game best suits.
“Sometimes that needs time in order to build your squad and give your players the information to be able to do that.
“That’s certainly what my approach will be going into my next job.”
After more than 15 years in management, from the lower levels of the non-league pyramid to the brink of the Championship, perhaps the defining characteristic of your career has been progression. Is that still the ambition now?
“Definitely. I’ve always wanted to progress. I’ve always wanted to test myself at the next level and see whether I can be successful.
“I’ve been fortunate that, at every club I’ve been at, we’ve managed to have some level of success. That’s what you want.
“You want to be successful, you want to win football matches, and you want to challenge yourself. That’s no different now.
“I’ve got a really good team around me, and we’re all eager to get back in and see what the next challenge is, but it has to be the right one.
“We’ve made a decision to step away from a really good club, so it would be wrong to then jump into something just because it’s available.
“We’ll wait. We’ll see what comes along. And when the right opportunity does come, we’ll be ready for it.”