Tommy Wright’s goals and willingness to make Darlington his home established him as a fans’ favourite during his two spells with the club as a striker. Now he has been welcomed back as the manager to revive their bid  for promotion. Deputy Sports Editor Craig Stoddart finds out what supporters can expect from the new man in Quakers’ hot seat

APPOINTING a 33-year-old manager could be described as a bold move, a risk that not all football clubs would be prepared to take.

Tommy Wright has arrived at Darlington having left Nuneaton Town and is now into his third managerial job. He started early, and already has a promotion and a relegation on his record.

Darlington’s decision to give Wright the top job has been warmly welcomed by supporters eager to draw a line under the previous regime and give their former No. 9 a chance.

They remember his goals in two spells with the club, his role in some of the team’s better days and a physical approach to playing that left nobody in any doubt as to his commitment.

While such attributes came on the pitch, the way in which Wright embraced the club and the area left a lasting impression, ensuring a warm welcome on his return to the area when he was announced as Quakers’ new boss last Friday.

“I was on the phone all Friday night, and when I got round to looking at how many messages I had there were something like 94 texts and 180 on WhatsApp. It went mad,” says Wright, now three times a Quaker.

“I’ve been hammered for my hair and my pink shirt, so that was nice! The amount of support I’ve had has been absolutely brilliant.”

He first joined in January 2007, heading north as a young striker from Barnsley as one of Dave Penney’s first signings, and left 18 months later in a £100,000 transfer to Aberdeen, having formed friendships which remain today.

“The whole experience made me like the place, there wasn’t one particular thing that happened,” says Wright, who recently referred to Darlington as being a "second home".

“I was a young lad when I moved up, I was 23 and I’d moved away from Leicester for the first time, bought a house in Ingleby Barwick and spent almost two years there.

“I met a lot of people away from the club. I got to know a lot of fans. I was always approachable, I always had a smile on my face and loved my time there.”

Friends from back home in Leicester would regularly travel to the North-East, once even playing a match against Darlington supporters team Uncovered FC after Wright had pulled a few strings to play at the Arena.

This week they’ve asked Quakers’ new boss to arrange a re-match, keen to revisit a town where it was not unknown for them to join Wright for a social evening, even after he had joined Aberdeen.

While Wright needs no introduction, neither does his assistant Alan White, the Darlington-born defender who enjoyed a lengthy career before joining his hometown team in the summer of 2007.

That was when he first became team-mates with Wright at The Northern Echo Arena, between them playing close to 300 games over the past decade, and their first match in the dug-out is today at Blyth Spartans.

White was previously coach at Spennymoor Town, who he joined in 2016 after a three-year stint with Darlington, his third spell at the club.

He was characteristically offering tactical advice from the Blackwell Meadows balcony while watching last Saturday’s game, a 2-1 win over Bradford Park Avenue.

Wright says he too was never afraid to voice an opinion as a player, but admits he had not planned on becoming a manager so soon. An opportunity arose while playing for Corby, and now he does not want to put his boots on again.

“I was 28 at the time,” he explains. “It got sprung on me. It wasn’t a case of being injured or not wanting to play football anymore. It probably happened too quickly, before I was ready for it. But I felt it was an opportunity that might not come round again. I was going through my coaching badges so I thought ‘I’ll give this a crack’.

“There are days when you miss playing, but I don’t miss the aches and the pains. I’d always been one to play through injuries and it was starting to take its toll a bit.

“I get as much satisfaction from winning as I did when I was a player. The only thing you can’t recreate is scoring, you can’t get that buzz back.”

He scored 23 goals in Quakers colours, 15 of them in 2007-08, a season that would see the team reach the play-off semi-finals, where an injury-hit side lost on penalties to Rochdale at Spotland.

Wright and Gregg Blundell were on crutches, Pawel Abbot injured too, with 15-year-old Curtis Main on the bench. Quakers started 4-5-1 with midfielder Micky Cummins on his own up front.

The move to Aberdeen came next – one goal in 18 appearances – before heading south to Grimsby in January 2010 and then the second coming with Quakers ahead of the 2010-11 season.

Signed by Simon Davey and quickly inherited by Mark Cooper, Wright returned to the Ingleby Barwick house he had rented out in the meantime.

He scored four times in his second spell, for long periods ignored by Cooper, his last goal coming at home to York in April ’11, though he came so close to scoring at Wembley.

A diving header went narrowly wide in the FA Trophy final against Mansfield Town, his role that day instead being provider: heading on to the crossbar, Chris Senior first to the rebound to score the unforgettable winner in the final seconds of extra-time.

Does he want the chance to play and score again?

“I want to be taken seriously as a manager,” he says. “I carried on playing in my first two years at Corby when I felt I could make an impact. But last year I played only 15 minutes. I could play if I really wanted to, but I get the same satisfaction from managing as I did playing.”

The playing days suddenly became intertwined with managerial responsibilities in September 2013.

Having left Darlington soon after the 2011-12 season started, not wanted by Cooper, a series of stints at various non-league posts followed before being appointed player/joint-manager of the Southern Premier League side Corby, eventually taking sole charge and leading the club to the title in 2014-15.

The Northamptonshire club came straight back down a year later, however, and it means there’s a black mark on Wright’s CV, but he’s keen to address the issue.

“People talk about the relegation, but what people don’t know is that I could have resigned and walked away so many times that season. I didn’t because I wanted to try to keep them up,” he says.

“The club knew they were going down. They cut the budget in October, so it was always going to be tough.

“I could’ve walked away and avoided having that ‘R’ on my CV, but I had the balls to stay and try to do something about it. People talk about the relegation more than the promotion.”

He eventually resigned at Corby in the first half of last season, returning to the National League North with Nuneaton as a player, but before he knew it he’d become a manager again as Kevin Wilson was axed.

This time Wright was able to avoid the drop, inspiring a run of form that included a win during January at Blackwell Meadows, and employing a style of football he’s keen to reproduce with Darlington.

The house in Ingleby Barwick has long been sold, so Wright will commute to training and stay in hotels when appropriate, probably the Blackwell Grange. “I promised my wife that I would never leave Leicester again for a job, so I have to stand by that,” he says.

He married his wife, Toni, in 2010 and they live in a village just outside Leicester with two children, Matilda, 6, and Penelope, 4.

“The reality is I have taken on a job two-and-a-half hours from my home town, so I have to face the fact it is going to cost me a certain amount.”

The travelling should at least give Wright time to consider how best to reinvigorate Quakers’ season, which has gone off course since winning their first three games of the campaign.

They are tenth, though last weekend’s win injected some belief, while the passing approach employed by caretaker managers Gary Brown and Phil Turnbull has pleased supporters and players. Martin Gray’s tactics centred more on high balls to tall striker Mark Beck, but that’s not how Wright wants to play.

“Ironically, Gary and Phil had set the boys up on Saturday in the formation that we hit Darlington with, which is my preferred formation,” said Wright, whose final game in charge at Nuneaton was a 2-1 win over Quakers a fortnight ago. “So they’ve got the ball rolling already.

“The boys got off to a flyer and it’s up to me and Alan to put our stamp on it, but based on what we saw on Saturday they will enjoy it and they will enjoy playing football.

“People look at it as 4-5-1, which it is out of possession, but it becomes a 4-1-4-1 when in possession. It is a really attacking formation, but it’s counter-attacking and fast-paced. I like to break lines with passes and if you’ve got someone like Phil Turnbull you need to find players with pockets of space.

“I think the boys showed glimpses of that on Saturday and when they attacked they attacked in numbers with intensity and that’s something we’ll have in training. Training will be hard work but it will be sharp and I think they’ll enjoy it.”

He cites Gray and ex-Leicester boss Micky Adams as being influential in his approach to management.

“They both had that hard-working mentality, which is something I’ve always bought into,” he says. “Steve Beaglehole was my academy coach at Leicester, another one for hard work, and I always buzzed off that, it’s what I needed.

“I need aggression in my game and that fits perfectly with Darlington and the group that is already there. They will respond to me and Whitey so well because we know what it’s like to be there as players.

“I think they’ve bought into us straight away. We only had a ten-minute chat with them after last week’s game but they were focused, there were smiles on faces and I can’t wait to get going.”