EFL Division 4: Surrey Park parts ways with coach David Jensen

An Eastern league Division 4 club has unveiled its interim coach after parting ways with its senior mentor of the past three years. Latest here.

An Eastern league Division 4 club has split with its coach mid-season.

Surrey Park has parted ways with mentor David Jensen after two seasons in the role, with playing-assistant James Kenworthy named interim coach for the remainder of 2022.

Surrey Park football operations manager Michael McKenzie said increased work demands for Jensen led to a mutual agreement to step down at the mid-season review.

Surrey Park and David Jensen have parted ways.

“He’s started a new role in the last month in pre-season which has been a lot more time consuming for him than he first anticipated, and he was probably finding that the full-time commitment to being a senior coach was a bit much,” McKenzie said.

“It came to the mid-year review and it was just one of those ones where he just needed to take a bit of a step back … once that came about we mutually parted ways.”

Jensen landed the coaching gig at the Division 4 club in late 2019, steering the Panthers to second spot in 2021.

Surrey Park currently sits third on the ladder with a 4-4 record but has lost its past two matches to Chirnside Park (second) and Kilsyth (fifth) by 12 and seven points respectively.

McKenzie said the past two outings had no bearing on the outcome of the mid-season review and there had been “no bad blood” between the parties.

He added Jensen had done an “immense” job for the club, taking on the role ahead of the 2020 non-season due to Covid.

Kenworthy joined the Panthers ahead of this season from Blackburn where he spent a decade in the league’s top division.

“We were pretty fortunate to have someone of his calibre to come across at the start of the year and we’re fortunate he’s happy to step into the interim coaching role,” McKenzie said.

Jensen has returned to Ringwood in Division 2 as senior assistant, having previously coached the club’s reserves to a top-three finish in 2019.

Jensen has been contacted for comment.

Surrey Park takes on fourth-placed Forest Hill away this Saturday.