Wilson still has the coaching itch to scratch at Nullawil in NCFL

Wilson joins Nullawil after last month finishing as coach of Bendigo league club Strathfieldsaye when the Storm were beaten in the preliminary final.

Wilson is one of the region's most experienced senior coaches dating back to his time at Colbinabbin in the early 2000s when he led the Grasshoppers to three Heathcote District league flags in a row from 2002 to 2004.

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He has also been integral to Strathfieldsaye becoming a BFNL powerhouse having coached the Storm to three premierships in 2014, 2015 (undefeated) and 2017.

Wilson - the coach of the BFNL 2010-19 Team of the Decade - announced in August he would be stepping down as Storm coach at the end of the 2023 season.

Across two stints as Strathfieldsaye coach (2011-17 and 2020-23) Wilson coached the Storm in 194 games, winning 146 of them.

But he still has the coaching itch to scratch and will do so at the Maroons, who in their first season in the NCFL this year after joining from the Golden Rivers league certainly made the competition stand up and take notice, not only finishing in the finals, but reaching the grand final where they fell 14 points short of the undefeated Sea Lake Nandaly.

"Whenever you take on coaching you want to be successful, develop players and win premierships and I think it's fair to say that bug is probably still there," Wilson said on Friday.

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"Throughout the communication I've had with the club they are very passionate and dedicated and there's a really strong community feel.

"The club wants to have the same success as what it had in its former league in the Golden Rivers to now in North Central and I think they probably opened up a few eyes this year in terms of how well they went first-up in playing off and they want to take it a step further.

"It's obviously a new challenge in a new league that I don't know a lot about, but I'll get stuck into a bit of vision and work on what we need to do to keep improving.

"There's a strong commitment already from nearly all of the group and it will be a matter now of having a look at what roles need to be filled, so that's what we will be doing over the next month."

As well as his premiership success at Strathfieldsaye and Colbinabbin, Wilson also remains the last coach to lead Kangaroo Flat to the BFNL finals in 2009 when the Roos made the preliminary final.

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"As a a club we're rapt to have appointed Darryl... you've only got to look at the record of what he has done and how he goes about it," Nullawil's Wade Humphreys said.

"He's exactly what our club needs and there's a great buzz around the club already. He is going to fit our mould just nicely with his professionalism."

Wilson takes over from Brett Barker, who stood down after coaching the Maroons for the past two seasons.

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