Photos (Top to Bottom): Sydney Olympic, with Steve Darby in the back row at the extreme right; South Hobart... Steve Darby is in the front row, second player from the left (don't count the kids), while Brian Roberts is at the left of the back row (with the hat); A Tasmanian youth representative side (Darby is back row at the left and Ross Wesson is back row at the right); Tasmanian youth representative side (Barry Shacklady is at extreme left of back row and Darby extreme right of back row); Tasmanian senior State side with coach Darby at extreme left in back row and Brian McKay extreme right in back row...this may be the side that beat South Melbourne Hellas 2-0 at South Hobart in the early 1980s. [There are many youngsters in these photos who went on to prominent senior careers in Tasmania and elsewhere...see if you can recognise any of them.]
Steve Darby, who worked in Tasmania for a decade, has been appointed national coach of Thailand.
Darby had been assistant to Thai national coach, Peter Reid, the former Manchester City and Sunderland star.
Reid has returned to the UK and will most likely become assistant manager at Sunderland.
Liverpool-born Darby was assistant coach of Bahrein just before coming to Tasmania in the early 1980s to be the player-coach of Devonport City in the State League.
He then became Tasmania's director of coaching and was in charge of several of the State's under-age representative teams, along with Brian McKay, Ross Wesson and Barry Shacklady.
Darby then turned to playing and coaching.
He coached White Eagles to a State League title and then played for University, South Hobart and Croatia-Glenorchy before heading interstate, where was assistant coach of Sydney Olympic in the old NSL and coach of the Matildas.
Darby then coached in Vietnam, where he became national women's coach.
He moved to Singapore and took Police to the league title and into the Asian Champions League.
A move to Malaysia followed, where he achieved success at club level before moving on to Bangkok and the position of assistant coach of Thailand until his elevation to the position of national coach today.
Darby isn't the only former White Eagles coach to make it big overseas.
Ken Worden, who played for and coached Eagles in the late 1970s, also coached at NSL level and then became national coach of both Singapore and Malaysia.
1 comment:
Is that a very young looking Brett Emerton in the back row of the Sydney Olympic photo?
I think Walter should be encouraged to put all his photos together in a large book similar to the book that came out about 10 years ago on the history of Tas Soccer. I wonder if Walter has kept tally on how many games he has attended over the years, would be over 5,000 I would have thought.
Well done to Steve Darby as well.
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