Darryl White

Darryl White (born 12 June 1973) is an Australian rules footballer whose career with the Brisbane Bears and Lions in the Australian Football League (AFL) lasted from 1992 to 2005.

An Indigenous Australian, in 2005 he was named at fullback in the Australian rules football Indigenous Team of the Century.

Beyond his AFL career, White continues to be involved in football, having forged one of the most successful careers of any Australian rules footballer, with six premierships across three competitions (AFL, NTAFL and QSL). He is an indigenous role model for many aboriginal Australians.

White grew up in Alice Springs in central Australia, playing junior football for the Pioneer Football Club. Like many of his peers he had a difficult adolescence, but had a natural talent for football. In 1990 he represented the Northern Territory at the Teal Cup under-17 national football carnival held in Brisbane, where he came to the attention of Brisbane Bears coach Robert Walls and his football manager Scott Clayton. Impressed with his clean ball handling skills, his leap and his ability to play tall, the Bears drafted him at the end of the season with a priority draft pick from their Queensland-Northern Territory recruiting zone.

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Despite initial reluctance to move to the Bears—a club which, in White's words, "only won two games a year", the future football star was persuaded to give the club a chance (turning up to his first training session in a purple LA Lakers singlet and bouncing a basketball). He found the transition from Alice Springs football to training under strict disciplinarian Walls difficult once there, for example; on one occasion during an 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) cycle up a mountain he hurled his bike off a cliff, telling his coach he'd come to play football, not ride bikes.