Former Hammer Julian Dicks will return to a football management role this summer.

This evening non-league Heybridge Swifts announced his return, as first-team manager revealing he will be taking over from July 1st.

Julian will resume his partnership with former Colchester United legend Karl Duguid.

Dicks coaching career began in 2009 with Eastern Counties League side Wivenhoe Town but he left the club shortly after the end of that season by mutual consent.[

He joined Conference National club Grays Athletic in mid-September 2009 In his first season at Grays, he was relegated from the Conference, whilst the club voluntarily dropped three levels to the Isthmian League Division One North. Dicks left Grays by mutual consent in May 2011.

Dicks then took take charge of the Sealand side at the Tynwald Hill International Football Tournament on the Isle of Man in July 2013.

In the summer of 2014, Dicks was appointed as a new manager of the West Ham United Ladies and a year later he was appointed the first-team coach for West Ham men under new manager and former teammate, Slaven Bilić. When Bilić was sacked by West Ham in November 2017, Dicks also left the club.

In 2018, Dicks was appointed manager of Heybridge Swifts. He left Heybridge to again work for Slaven Bilić, at West Bromwich Albion in 2019 but in 2020
following Bilić’s sacking, Dicks left West Brom too.

As a player in two spells at West Ham, he played 315 competitive games and scored 64 goals, many of them penalties. His final appearance for West Ham came against Arsenal on 6 February 1999, with his final goal coming in the FA Cup against Swansea City on 2 January 1999.

We wish Dicksie all the best in his return to Heybridge Swifts.