Gillingham have appointed a new youth team manager to replace the departed under-18 boss Mark Moss.
Moss recently left Priestfield after being appointed academy manager at Swindon Town and his replacement will be a familiar name to Gillingham fans.
Newly-named under-18 manager Joe Dunne, 51, played for the Gills as a defender from 1990-1996 and made over 100 appearances. He also had a brief stint at Dover Athletic in between two spells at Colchester United.
Injury ended the Dubliners playing career at the age of 29 and he’s gone onto gain plenty of experience in the lower-leagues, from youth to managing over 100 games at first team level.
Dunne started coaching in the Colchester youth set-up, enjoying success with their under-18s. He worked his way up and was in the senior backroom team under various managers, also taking charge of a team that played Gillingham in August 2009.
He was appointed as manager of Colchester, then in League 1, permanently in September 2012, having by then been at the club for a decade in various roles.
Dunne has also managed at Cambridge United but was sacked in December 2018, which led to Mark Bonner taking charge. The current Gills boss was stepping up from his role as assistant head coach. It was Bonner’s first time in the manager’s hot-seat, taking two games on a caretaker basis before the appointment of Colin Calderwood.
Dunne, meanwhile, joined the coaching team at Bristol Rovers and had a spell in caretaker charge there before joining Mansfield Town.
He returned to Colchester as assistant to Wayne Brown but the pair were sacked early on in the 2022/23 season. Not long after, he linked up with Graham Coughlan as his assistant at Newport County, remaining there until leaving in the summer.
“I am really looking forward to it,” said Dunne. “It’s great to be back where I started. It brings back a lot of good memories. The staff have been so welcoming, they’ve been exceptional.
“I have always been passionate about young players in terms of their development and how they work.”
He takes charge of a Gillingham youth team who have a big game on Tuesday night, when they take on Swindon Town at Priestfield in the second round of the FA Youth Cup (kick off 7pm).
Youth teams from the Premier League and the Championship enter at the third-round stage and the winner of Gillingham versus Swindon will play QPR under-18s. Gillingham beat Charlton Athletic’s youth team in the first round of the cup.
