PHC Zebras are mourning the death of one of their most famous and decorated coaches.Ed Durham, who guided the club to the coveted “Triple Crown”, comprised of League, FA Cup and Friendship Trophy, died on Tuesday after a long bout with illness. He was aged 84.Durham started as a defender playing in the former Bermuda Football League for Key West Rangers.“Ed was a very strong defender,” Dennis Wainwright, a former Wellington Rovers and Young Men’s Social Club goalkeeper, said. “He was very tough but a complete gentleman off the field.”Durham moved to PHC after they had merged with Key West Rangers, where he had the honour of captaining the club before progressing to coach.“I came under Ed as a coach and came up into the first team and played with him in his last days,” David Frost, a former PHC winger, said. “He played the game very hard.“He was very disciplined whenever we sat down and done blackboard work, that’s how he wanted things carried out. He taught you how to lose and how to appreciate a win.“He was a father to the young players as well as a coach. It was much more than football. He was a perfect gentleman and treated all players the same.”Ed Burrows, a former PHC goalkeeper, is another player whose career was heavily influenced by Durham.“He was a good coach who guided me through the game of football,” Burrows said. “He taught me a lot and helped me correct mistakes that I was making during the game in his time.“He had a good personality. He was good towards the players, everybody loved him. He was a good coach and his game plan was good.”During the 1970-71 campaign Durham coached PHC to their first and only “Triple Crown” success, with both Frost and Burrows members of that star-studded team, which also included future coach Leroy “Nibs” Lewis, Dale Russell and the late Marischal “Mop” Astwood.“He believed that we were the best team on earth, that nobody could beat us,” Frost added. “I think we went through a few games without having goals scored against us.”Burrows attributes a blend of youth and experience to the team’s success.“The majority of us were young players, like myself and Mop, and he kept some of the older guys to guide the young players through,” he said. “Some teams right now will just get rid of their older players one time. But you need those older players to guide the young ones through, and that is what made us successful.”