Andy Hessenthaler
English association football player and manager (born 1965)

Andrew Hessenthaler (born 17 August 1965) is an English football manager and former player who is head of recruitment at EFL League Two club Gillingham. He began his career in non-league football and did not turn professional until he joined Watford at the age of 26. In 1996, Hessenthaler joined Gillingham and spent the next ten years at the club as player and later player-manager, managing the club to its highest ever finish in the English football league system and becoming regarded as a legend of the Kent club. After leaving Gillingham, he had a short spell at Barnet, before joining Dover Athletic in 2007. In his two seasons in charge he led the club to successive championships, of Isthmian League Division One South and the Isthmian League Premier Division. After three years at Dover, he became manager at Gillingham for the second time, but his contract was terminated at the end of the 2011–12 season. He returned to the club as assistant manager in 2014, before taking on a similar role at Leyton Orient the following year. In 2016, he was appointed manager of the club, but was sacked later the same year. In November he was appointed manager of Eastleigh, but the following year left to return to Dover, where he stayed until January 2023.
Career
Non-League career
As a teenager, Hessenthaler played for the youth team of his local club Dartford.
“Andy Hessenthaler” enters the record as english association football player and manager (born 1965). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Andy, Hessenthaler and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Andy Hessenthaler” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Andy, Hessenthaler and English provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4760805. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1996, 2007 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Andy Hessenthaler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.