Massaging the figures: An Interview with Dean Conway

CC4 Museum of Welsh Cricket Podcast

,Dean has over 30 years of experience working in elite sport working as a musculoskeletal physiotherapist.
He was Head Physiotherapist at England Cricket for over ten years during the period when the national team saw some fantastic success including the iconic Ashes victory of 2005. He was also Head of Medical Services at Surrey County Cricket Club for over four years.
He began his career with Glamorgan County Cricket Club and his career with them stretches from 1989 to 2019. He has seen hundreds of professional cricketers, including world renowned players such as Ravi Shastri, Viv Richards, Waqar Younis and Jacques Kallis stretched out on his treatment table but insists that, to him, each person is just another collection of muscle and bone to be analysed and treated.
A Mountain Ash boy brought up in a miner's pub Dean still watches the local rugby team most Saturdays and is very proud of his valley's roots. We talk about his early years and his rugby career that first opened his eyes to the skills and abilities of the physiotherapist. He talks about University, his early clinical experiences and the connections that brought him to Glamorgan.
Dean tells us a little of the life of the cricket physio ( the days are long !) and some of the places and people he has met. Mike Fatkin was part of the management team at Glamorgan when he started there in 1989 (uhm !!) and has turned into a long life friend. He talks about how he approached the task of keeping all the players in the team as fit as possible, the importance of dealing in percentages of fitness and the need for players to rest.
Outside of the successful teams he has been associated with Dean remains a Valleys boy, proud of where he has come from and keen to see the game of cricket grow through programmes like the All Stars and the Dynamoes.