Norm Dare


Norman Bernard Dare is a former Australian rules football coach and player, most notable for coaching five premierships in the Queensland Australian Football League.

Playing career

Dare initially played league football for Fitzroy in the Victorian Football League, where he played 70 games between 1968 and 1974. He moved to West Torrens in the South Australian National Football League in 1975, most notable for his actions in the Round 15, 1975, match against West Adelaide, when Dare managed to jump the fence and hide amongst the crowd to prevent Torrens from being penalised in a head count. He returned to Fitzroy in 1977, and played only two more senior games before retiring from playing.

Coaching career

Following the end of his playing career, Dare remained at Fitzroy and served two seasons as reserves coach. In 1980 he moved to Queensland, and coached the Kedron Football Club to a QAFL premiership in 1980. In 1982, he moved to Southport. He coached there from 1982–1988, and was the club's inaugural QAFL coach when it moved to the state's top league from the Gold Coast Australian Football League in 1983. Dare won three QAFL premierships with Southport during that time, in 1983, 1985 and 1987. In 1989, Dare moved to the Brisbane Bears in the VFL/AFL as an assistant coach, and then as senior coach in 1990, but both seasons resulted in wooden spoons, which ended Dare's coaching career with the Bears. He continued to serve in an administrative role with the club during the early 1990s. While active as a coach during this time, Dare also regularly coached Queensland in interstate football.
In the 1990s, Dare left Queensland to serve in assistant coaching roles at , then . He returned for a second two-year stint at Southport in 2004, winning another premiership with the club in 2005, after which he stepped aside. In 2011, he returned to coach Southport for a third time, where he was senior coach for a further three years.

Honours

In 2003, Dare was named as the coach of Queensland's official 'Team of the Century'.