Chancy Cooke once travelled six days by boat to spend three months helping re-dredge the harbour of an island populated by around 240 people.
The 14-hour working days in his first senior head coaching position with HKFC, therefore, “do not scare” the South African.
It was 2008 when Cooke accepted the assignment on Tristan da Cunha, a 98-square-kilometre territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. He was saving money to resume his travels, after leaving South Africa following the completion of an industrial engineering degree.
“I agree with affirmative action, but as a white South African it meant I had to look abroad for work,” Cooke said. “I always saw myself as a wanderer, though. When I got my first bike, I rode as far from home as possible, then tried to get back before the sun went down.”
HKFC and Cooke are a neat fit: the 39-year-old from a non-conventional coaching background who is up for a “fight against the odds”, and the club that has long existed, in Cooke’s words, “on its own island” in Hong Kong football.
