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Bradley Dack has named his Dream 11 and you might be surprised to see which Gillingham players made it in.
The attacking midfielder appeared on the ‘In the Box’ podcast hosted by former team-mate Luke Rooney, where he discusses the best he’s played alongside.
Dack played over 150 league games for the Gills and was eventually sold to Blackburn Rovers for a fee of around £750,000 in the summer of 2017.
He’s been a hit at Ewood Park but had his season ended after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury in December.
Despite not playing alongside him in a professional game, Dack saw enough of right-back Barry Fuller in training and from the sidelines to include him, saying: “I remember watching him from stands and thinking ‘no-one goes past him, ever.’ I never saw anyone run past him or out-strength him. When I was a kid he was the best.”
He mentioned Adam Barrett and Andy Frampton as top defenders he had played with - the pair were key to Gills’ 2013 League 2 title success - but’s it’s Irishman John Egan who makes the cut.
Dack played alongside him during his time under Peter Taylor.
Recalling their first meeting, he said: “I remember playing Bromley in pre-season and he kept wrapping it through the lines to me and I was thinking ‘who is this and where has he come from?’ We got talking and became really, really good friends. He was just brilliant.
“He’s a leader as well and would probably be my skipper in there. He was the best player I played with at Gills.”
Dack puts himself in the team too. He was named as League 1 player-of-the-year at the Gills and quickly settled in the Championship but at first, he admitted he didn't think he would be good enough to make it in the professional game.
“I had doubts since I got released from Charlton,” he said.
“I bounced back from that, got into the youth team at Gillingham and then the first team. The first start I had was Wycombe away in League 2. I started and played central midfield in a three and I remember thinking ‘these are too good for me, too quick, too strong’ and Martin Allen took me off at half-time.
“I said to my dad ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be good enough to play at this level’.”
An experienced side that year helped him through.
He said: “It was lucky for me because a lot of the players were older. It was an old group, Deon Burton, Danny Kedwell, Frammo, Stuart Nelson and they guided me through that first season and we ended up winning League Two. And from then, it was a confidence thing.
“The more games I played, the more confident I got. I’d say to young players now ‘don’t ever doubt yourself’. I think that was a mistake I made. I wish I had never doubted myself.
“You have to believe in your own ability, like I do now. From that age if the manager is picking you fir the team you are good enough and you ave to believe you are good enough.”
One player who divided opinion at Gills was striker Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. He was a big-money loan signing under Justin Edinburgh but fell out of favour under Ady Pennock and was eventually sent back to QPR before his deal expired.
He made Dack’s XI but the midfielder admitted: “He is the most frustrating player I’ve ever played with.
“When he first came to the Gills, in his first 10 games, he was unplayable. Absolutely unplayable. Just incredible some of the things he did. I used to sit back and say ‘how is he not playing in the Premier League?’
“I think I found that out how over the season that I spent with him. He was the best player in training every day. You couldn’t get the ball off him in a five-a-side and his finishing was a joke, but we went through a bad patch as a team and he went through a bad patch as a player and he never really came out the back of it and that’s maybe what let him down, his mentality. He was quality.”
Dack mentions others in the podcast, including Adebayo Akinfenwa.
“Bayo was the most unselfish player I had played with,” he said.
“He would rather lay it off to you even if he had an open goal. I had a great relationship with him but I probably didn’t get enough game time under Peter Taylor.”
Dack’s XI: David Raya, Barry Fuller, John Egan, Charlie Mulgrew, Greg Cunningham, Bradley Johnson, Stewart Downing, Bradey Dack, Adam Johnson, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Danny Graham.
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