Biography
MIdfielder and striker Dean Windass played a pivotal role in two eras of Hull City’s history – the struggles of the 1990s under Terry Dolan’s potless leadership, then ten years later the incredible campaign that turned the Tigers from Championship consolidators to Premier League contenders. Dean was the epitome of a local lad made good and his role as a Hull City player was immense.
Dean Windass was born and raised in West Hull’s Gypsyville Estate, within the glare of the Boothferry Park floodlights during night matches. He attended Francis Askew Primary and Riley High Schools and was chosen for Hull Schoolboys from the age of 11 onwards. Dean joined the Tigers on associated schoolboy terms in August 1984 and graduated to City’s Juniors youth training scheme, led by ex-Tiger Dave King, a year later. He served the Juniors for nearly three years but at the end of the 1987/88 season he was released by manager Brian Horton without making a first team start.
For some this rejection would have led to disillusionment, but Dean continued to work on his game and his physique while playing for North Ferriby United and working on building sites and at a local food factory. By the early months of the 1991/92 season Dean was a stand-out player at Church Lane and North Ferriby United of the Northern Counties East League were regular hosts to scouts from higher divisions. City manager Terry Dolan had been in post for ten months by October 1991 and his eye for a bargain led him to Ferriby where he saw a raw talent whose touch was now matched by enhanced strength. Dolan signed Windass for the Tigers in October 1991 and the second act of a three-part Hull City drama began.
Dean made his senior debut at right back in an October 1991 League Cup thumping by Queens Park Rangers. He stayed in the side and scored his first goals two weeks later in an Associate Members’ Cup tie against Bradford City. By January 1992 he had moved to an advanced midfield role and netted eight times in total in his first season. At the start of the 1992/93 season Windass had become a first team fixture but as Dolan’s Tigers struggled for form Dean had scored only three times by the end of the year. Another four goals in the New Year helped City to narrowly avoid relegation and as he grew in confidence a swagger started to appear in Dean’s game.
At the start of the 1993/94 season the rag-tag squad of players assembled by manager Dolan put in an unlikely winning run that propelled the Tigers to the top of the table by mid-September 1993. Windass scored in five consecutive games which included two hattricks in wins against Cambridge United and Bristol Rovers. A third hattrick of the season against Barnet in December 1993 meant Dean had scored fourteen times before Christmas – while City’s form waned Dean continued to impress and took his goal tally to 24 with an April 1994 goal against Exeter. This form continued into the 1994/95 season as he scored 17 goals and was now recognised as one of the most potent players in League Division 2. A long winless run in the early weeks of the 1995/96 season affected Windass’s goal rate but he roared back to action in late October 1995 with a stunning and audacious long distance goal at faraway Wycombe Wanderers. By the end of November 1995 City’s continuing financial difficulties meant that the club’s most saleable asset was available at a suitable price, while Dean was growing more dissatisfied with the disciplinarian approach of management team Dolan and Lee. Scottish Premier League side Aberdeen were willing to pay the price that prised Dean away, £500,000, and his second spell at City drew to a close in November 1996.
Dean adjusted effortlessly to footballing life in the SPL and scored nine times for the Dons in the second half of the 1995/96 season. He started the 1996/97 season by scoring in each of the first four League games, which were supplemented by four extra time goals in a September 1996 7-3 win over Greenock Morton in the League Cup that took his tally to nine within the first month of the season. Ending the season with 16 goals, Dean was one of Aberdeen’s most important players as well as one of the city’s most thirsty bar customers. He developed an increasingly feisty attitude to his profession in the 1997/98 season, which reached a crescendo in a November 1997 League match against Dundee United when Dean was shown a red card for a scything tackle, earned a second dismissal for aiming a volley of abuse at the referee, then was sent off a third time (sent even further off?) for uprooting the corner flag as he left the field of play. Aberdeen lost the game 0-5 and Windass was suspended for nearly two months. He was in and out of the Dons’ first team for the rest of the season and after 31 goals in 93 senior appearances for Aberdeen he left the club in the 1998 close season.
In August 1998 Windass joined League Division 1 side Oxford United, a club managed by early 1990s City defender Malcolm Shotton who knew about Dean’s skills. Oxford paid £475,000 for Windass’s signature and he scored regularly in a team struggling at the foot of the League Division 1 table. With relegation looking inevitable by March 1999, Oxford cashed in and sold Dean to League Division 1 promotion chasers Bradford City for £950,000, having scored 18 times in 38 starts.
Windass’s three goals in 12 appearances at the end of the 1998/99 season helped the Bantams gain an unlikely promotion to the Premier League and in August 1999 he made his top flight against Middlesbrough at the age of 30. His first full season at Bradford yielded ten Premier League goals including a hattrick in April 2000 against Derby County. He remained a first team regular as Bradford struggled at the foot of the Premier League table during the 2000/01 season and in March 2001 he transferred to Premier League rivals Middlesbrough. Dean scored 18 goals in 88 appearances during this first spell at Bradford City.
Despite scoring on his Boro debut against Chelsea and starting the last 8 games of the season, Dean was used mostly as substitute in the early months of the 2001/02 season and was loaned to League Division 1 side Sheffield Wednesday in December 2001, where he made two appearances. Dean returned to Middlesbrough in January 2002 and continued to play a peripheral role in the Boro first team, though he did start three of six FA Cup ties that propelled the Teessiders to the semi-final, which they lost to Arsenal. Out of the first team picture in the first half of the 2002/03 season, Windass spent late November and early December 2003 on loan at League Division 1 side Sheffield United, a temporary move that yielded three goals in 4 starts. After a brief return to Middlesbrough over the festive period, Windass signed for the Blades in January 2003 – he had scored three times in 46 appearances for Middlesbrough during his two years at the Riverside Stadium.
Dean’s three goals in 18 starts during the last five months of the 2002/03 season helped Sheffield United reach the League Division 1 play-offs but he was not selected for the Wembley final and he left the Blades that summer with unfinished Wembley business on his mind – more on that shortly. In July 2003 he returned to Bradford City and he spent three and a half seasons as a Bantams first team regular in the Championship and League One. In the 2004/05 season Bradford finished midway down the League One table but Dean found his form and scored 28 goals, the best seasonal return of his career. He scored another 20 times the during the following 2005/06 season – triple goal hauls in April 2005 against Bournemouth, August 2005 against Rochdale and April 2006 against Scunthorpe all added to Dean’s tally of career hattricks. Dean scored 12 goals in 28 appearances in the first half of the 2006/07 season, taking his Bradford tally during his second spell at Valley Parade to 66 goals in 155 appearances.
In January 2007 Windass was lured to rejoin Hull City by newly appointed manager Phil Brown, initially on a half season loan. His eight goals in 18 appearances helped revive the Tigers, who avoided relegation after Dean scored the winner at Cardiff City in April 2007, a victory that also banished Leeds United – rivals of both clubs – to the third tier. Windass made his transfer to Hull City permanent in the 2007 close season and in the 2007/08 season he struck up a deadly partnership with on loan Manchester United tyro Fraizer Campbell. The combination of age and youth saw City rise up the Championship table as the season wore on and saw the Tigers qualify for the play-offs.
In tandem with Nick Barmby, another Hull born player who made his name in the Premier League before joining his hometown club, Dean masterminded a remarkable play-off campaign. Windass and Barmby both scored in the semi-final first leg at Vicarage Road that saw Watford defeated 2-0, then in the return leg at the KC Stadium Dean was a creative force as City dealt with an early goal concession to win 4-1 and qualify for the club’s first Wembley play-off final. At 3:38pm on Saturday 24th May 2008 Dean Windass made his greatest contribution to his hometown club – a surge by Campbell down the inside left channel led to a lofted pass across the penalty box to Dean, who smote a superb 18-yard sliced volley into the Bristol City net that took the Tigers to the top flight for the first time since the club’s creation in 1904 – quite simply destined to be.
Now 39 years old, Dean was used sparingly by Phil Brown during the early months of the 2008/09 season as City surged to the upper reaches of the Premier League thanks to goals from Geovanni, Daniel Cousin and Marlon King. Dean scored his first and only Premier League goal for Hull City in November 2008 when he came off the bench and forced a bouncing ball into the Pompey net using his nose – they all count. His last City match ended at half time on Boxing Day 2008 at the Etihad Stadium with manager Phil Brown wagging his tanned finger at his players on the pitch – Dean was subbed off and two weeks later loaned to League One side Oldham Athletic where he scored once in 11 appearances.
Windass left the Tigers a third time in the 2009 close season and was appointed player/assistant manager at League Two side Darlington. The Quakers ran into a financial brick wall in October 2009 and after four months Dean left the club and ended his senior playing career – 733 appearances and 235 goals between 1991 and 2009, a quite remarkable achievement given the halting start he made in the 1980s City youth team.
The subsequent years after football proved to be a rollercoaster for Dean. He applied for several managerial jobs in the two years after he stopped playing, including the Hull City job in 2012, but was knocked back by several chairmen. He suffered depression and struggled with alcoholism before getting expert assistance at the Priory Clinic, private matters that became public in 2012 when his marriage broke down. He later got himself straight and worked as an ambassador for Hull City for three years then fulfilled a number of marketing roles that made use of his high profile within the game. Despite this tricky spell in his life, Dean remained a treasured figure amongst Hull City fans who could always attract a crowded room as long as he was willing to regale those present with the story about how he scored the goal that gave Hull City top flight football for the first time in the club’s 104 year history. WINDASS!!!!…. magical.
Details
Nationality: England
Date/Place of Birth: 1 April 1969, Hull
Hull City First Game: 9 October 1991, Queens Park Rangers A (League Cup Second Round Second Leg), 22 years, 191 days old
Hull City Final Game: 26 December 2008, Manchester City A (Premier League), 39 years, 269 days old
Clubs
Hull City (1985-1988), North Ferriby United (1988-1991), Hull City (1991-1995), Aberdeen (1995-1998), Oxford United (1998-1999), Bradford City (1999-2001), Middlesbrough (2001-2003), Sheffield Wednesday (2001, loan), Sheffield United (2002, loan), Sheffield United (2003), Bradford City (2003-2007), Hull City (2007, loan), Hull City (2007-2009), Oldham Athletic (2009, loan), Darlington (2009-2010), Barton Town (2010), Scarborough Athletic (2011)
Hull City Record
Career: 271 apps, 89 goals
Dean Windass| Season | LGE App | LGE Gls | FAC App | FAC Gls | FLC App | FLC Gls | EUR App | EUR Gls | OTH App | OTH Gls |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985/86 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 1986/87 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 1987/88 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 1991/92 | 31 (1) | 6 | – | – | 1 (0) | 0 | – | – | 4 (0) | 2 |
| 1992/93 | 40 (1) | 7 | 2 (0) | 0 | 2 (0) | 0 | – | – | 3 (0) | 0 |
| 1993/94 | 43 (0) | 23 | 2 (0) | 0 | 2 (0) | 1 | – | – | 1 (0) | 0 |
| 1994/95 | 43 (1) | 17 | 1 (0) | 0 | 2 (0) | 0 | – | – | 1 (0) | 0 |
| 1995/96 | 16 (0) | 4 | 1 (0) | 0 | 4 (0) | 3 | – | – | 3 (0) | 1 |
| 2006/07 | 15 (3) | 8 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 2007/08 | 29 (8) | 11 | 0 (1) | 2 | 0 (1) | 0 | – | – | 3 (0) | 2 |
| 2008/09 | 1 (4) | 1 | – | – | 1 (0) | 1 | – | – | – | – |