The New South Welshman has played at high levels for a decade for state side South Cardiff including the national premier league and the FFA Cup and slotted in quickly as president of Atlas football club since arriving in Mount Isa at the start of the year.

He and wife Sam came to Isa when she got a teaching job with Good Shepherd Catholic College and Dean admits he thought it might be difficult for him to adjust.

“I used to have an academy in Newcastle (NSW) and I didn’t think there was the population or the interest in soccer here, to be perfectly honest,” Dean said.

“But since being here a little while I found there is a lot of kids that love it so I thought why not give kids the opportunity to get a bit of high quality coaching.”

The North West Star caught up with Dean at a soccer holiday camp in Mount Isa on the weekend where Dean was putting a bunch of enthusiastic local kids through their paces.

“This is more of a fun based activity, something to get the kids active,” he said.

“Today I’ve got 15 activities planned for the day focussing on four main skills: passing, dribbling, shooting and one versus one, which is the biggest part of soccer.”

Dean said the holiday training camps were one arm of his business Soccer Institute of Australia.  

“But the main one back home was where we used to have week to week training,” he said. “So for example Tuesday at 4pm we’d have 10-12 year olds and they’d turn up to a session and they’d get proper coaching and we’d run them through how to pass, how to bring a ball down, all those finer skills that can be missed when mum and dad are the coach. By the time the kids have reached 13 or 14 they may have missed the boat with representative sides.”

Dean said he hoped to get that side of the business back up in 2017. “I’d love to develop soccer in Mount Isa,” he said. “Nothing would give me more joy than to say I coached this kid for five years and he went on to play A-league, or Australia, that’s my dream.”