Ending playing career is 'a bit scary' - Lewington

Dean Lewington made his English Football League debut back in 2003

Dean Lewington once admitted to being a bit of a footballing dinosaur.

"As you get older, especially the way modern football is going, over 30s are seen as prehistoric really," he said in the autumn of 2022 as he approached the 900th match of his career.

Now just over a month away from his 41st birthday, time has finally caught up with the MK Dons defender, who will retire from playing at the end of the season.

Only Peter Shilton, Tony Ford, Graham Alexander and Terry Paine have played more senior games in English football than Lewington.

"It feels quite surreal. Beforehand 'retiring' is just a word, it sounds OK and then it dawned on me that I won't get to play football [any more], which is a little bit scary now that it's come to it," he told BBC Look East.

"It's been on my mind for maybe two years now and it's just the right time.

"I was in a Sunday league team at six, in an academy at eight, and I'm now about to turn 41, so three quarters of my life has been playing football.

"My whole life will change and that part is unfortunately coming to an end."

From Wimbledon to Milton Keynes

Dean Lewington playing for Wimbledon against Nottingham Forest at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes in 2004

Lewington played his first league game as an 18-year-old for the old Wimbledon FC against Sheffield Wednesday in April 2003, just a few months before the club relocated to Milton Keynes.

It was a controversial decision by the InterMK consortium, headed by Pete Winkelman, and led to them being renamed MK Dons ahead of the 2004-05 season.

"The news about coming to Milton Keynes was circulating for a year or two, but it was still under the Wimbledon name so it was kind of a weird time," he said.

"There was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of noise around the move because it had never happened before. It was a strange time but quite exciting for a young player.

"If I'd been mid-career it would have been very different, but for a young player it felt new and a challenge and turned into this [long career]."

He continued: "We didn't know where it was at all really... 20 years ago there were roads with a lot of piles of sand and dirt where [housing] estates would be [in the future] so it had a different feel about it.

"My mum told me that they offered my nan [a chance] to relocate to Milton Keynes in the 60s or 70s, but she turned it down - so I came instead!

"It was all new, most of the boys were from inner London, it was something we'd never come across."

MK 'does make sense, it's just a little bit different'

Dean Lewington scored twice in a 5-1 win over Yeovil as MK Dons won promotion to the Championship in 2015

Many visiting Milton Keynes for the first time have mixed feelings about it, but Lewington feels right at home.

"Anyone who comes here says 'I don't understand it' and I kind of understand what they mean from being an outsider coming here," he said.

"There are some really nice villages on the outskirts. And when you drive into town you can park right outside the restaurants, whereas in London you have to find a car park and walk 10 minutes, or use public transport.

"If you immerse yourself in it, you appreciate why it was designed the way it was and it does make sense, it's just a little bit different."

Lewington has had plenty of great moments as a Don, including a 4-0 League Cup win over Manchester United in 2014, in front of a crowd of more than 26,000.

But that is not the best memory from his long career.

"The Yeovil game here [in 2015] to get [promotion] to the Championship is probably the best moment. It took 10 years for us to get to there," Lewington said.

'My peers retired six or seven years ago'

Lewington has not played a first-team game since the end of November, but what does he put his longevity down to?

"I'm not an explosive player so I don't have a tendency to pull muscles."

He added: "My peer groups that I came through with retired six or seven years ago. I feel very fortunate that I managed to stay relatively injury-free which allowed me to play for so long and also that my style of game allowed me to do that.

"This last season has been disappointing in terms of how many games I've played but before that I've played most of the season [each year] and it's something that I love doing. It's a job that most people would give their right arm to do."

Lewington has been MK Dons interim boss on three occasions but was overlooked for that role when Scott Lindsey was sacked in March.

He is currently working to earn his badges with a view to a move into coaching but admits it will be a huge wrench if the path forwards means he has to leave the club.

"I'm institutionalised now," he said.

"It's such a fantastic club. I've poured my life into it for 20 years and it saddens me to see where it is at the moment [in League Two].

"There is potential for it to be so much more and I would like to be involved in that, but whatever comes, we'll wait and see."