Capital Football advise the following:
Capital Football is pleased to announce the appointment of Royston Thomas as the new Technical Director for the ACT and surrounding region.
Thomas, 60, was selected from a high-quality list of applicants and comes armed with decades of experience as a player, manager, coach and high performance director across a range of countries and across the full spectrum of age grades and both genders.
Born in Swansea, South Wales, United Kingdom, Thomas was a well-travelled youth and reserve team player appearing for Swansea City, Bristol Rovers and Oxford United before enjoying a spell with Arcadia Shepherds in South Africa.
He moved to Australia when he was 22 and was appointed youth team coach at Sydney City and worked his way up to assistant manager for Australia during the 1980’s. Moving back to Wales Royston joined the Welsh FA and for the next fifteen years was in charge of national player development taking control of player progression from under-12 to under-16 level.
A major achievement whilst with the Welsh FA was being appointed as Women’s National Coach where he implemented a scheme to promote the talent of the countries under-16, under-18 and under-20 squads in order to make the senior side a more competitive unit.
Following this, Royston travelled to Lebanon where he was appointed manager of Al Ansar, a club famous for winning sixteen league championships in a row, enough to score a place in the Guinness Book of Records at that time.
Returning to the UK, Royston headed back to his home town club, Swansea City where he was named Technical Coach before finally returning to Australia to take up the post of Football NSW Coaching and Development Manager.
Throughout his varied career Royston notes that his time with the Welsh FA was perhaps his most important.
“Whilst with the FAW (Football Association of Wales) I was in charge of player development and coach education which, to my mind, was the most important role I have had so far,” he said. “I implemented a scheme to identify talent at a younger age in order to make the national team competitive on the international stage and we saw several youngsters progressing into the first team from that era.”
The amiable Welshman has an important task ahead of him and has identified his main aims as twofold.
“In no particular order, firstly, I aim to improve the coaches and work with all the coaches I can to improve their understanding so that they can work to their maximum potential to create better players. Secondly, I aim to improve player development from grassroots up to the elite level,” he commented.
“I’m a very approachable person and look forward to working with the local clubs to help the ones who haven’t been serviced in the past to make sure people have access to the latest methods and modern trends as well as to implement as best as we can the FFA national Football Curriculum.”
Royston Thomas will take up his new post as Technical Director on 14th February.