They say once you leave you should never go back, but Gary Darrell aims to prove that old adage wrong.

Last at the helm of the Bermuda national soccer team in the early 1990s, Darrell was handed the reins again yesterday after the Island's Football Association decided not to renew the contract of Mark Trott.

Darrell, who led Bermuda to their greatest success in 1992 when the nation made the second phase of World Cup qualifying, was unveiled at a hastily arranged press conference at BFA headquarters.

His appointment to the position - which carries a three-year contract and a salary that the BFA described as the most generous they have ever offered to a part-time coach - comes just over a year after Trott was brought in.

Although Trott was not available for comment after the press conference, sources say he was disappointed not to have his tenure extended, believing he had not been given the time to prove himself either a success or a failure.

Ironically, Darrell ruled himself out of running for the position last year and backed, among others, Trott as the right man for the job.

"With today's players it would be a much bigger job than it was for me," he told The Royal Gazette in January, 2001.

"Our senior national programme has been inactive and the local game has suffered as a result.

"You need to give players something to motivate them, to get them interested.

"But how do you get a successful national programme going when the quality of players you see on a Sunday is way below what we need to compete in the Caribbean Cup and the World Cup."

So what has changed in the interim to convince him to apply for the job?

"One thing - I miss it," said Darrell. "The other thing is that I am no longer self-employed so I would have more time to commit to what they are asking now.

"They are the main reasons but I also like what they (the BFA) are presenting, the planning involved. It's not a case of `let's get into it and make things happen as we go along' - they definitely have a plan in mind that makes a lot of sense to me.

"Knowing before going in that there are things in place that you can work towards helped make the decision for me."

For one reason or another Trott clearly did not fit in with the BFA's plans and if you listen to the Association's second vice-president and head of the technical committee, Robert Calderon, he almost implies he wished Darrell had put his name in the hat last time around.

"Without going into any great detail, we made a decision to hire who we considered to be the best person for the position based on a number of criteria," he said of the toss-up between the two contenders. "One: we wanted someone who had tremendous experience of international football. Mr. Darrell clearly has that.

"Two: Someone that has the experience to mentor other coaches . . . and Mr. Darrell clearly has that.

"Those were the two specific reasons that we hired Mr. Darrell. That's not to say that Mr.Trott did not have the correct skill sets but based on the things that I just mentioned, Mr. Darrell, I feel very strongly, is the right person for this position."

Calderon added: "I think what we had was that during the last selection process Mr. Darrell did not apply for the position. He did apply for it this time . . . and he is the right candidate for this position."

Calderon believes that mistakes were made in the past and that not everyone, and he mentioned no names, was on the same page. Those errors have now been corrected, he said.

"The coaches that came in under the regime prior to me taking charge of the technical committee had some plans that didn't in fact meet with the mandates and objectives that we set," he said. "They were looking at involving themselves in competitions that, quite frankly, didn't meet the guidelines that we had established as the best way forward.

"We have taken our time to rethink this whole process.

"We believed very seriously that national football needed to be in harmony with the domestic programme.

"Where we have shifted in terms of emphasis at the national level is that what ever we do should have a direct and positive impact on club football. In the past the national team was the only game in town, so to speak, and really that has not improved our football.

"By doing it this way and have more teams coming to Bermuda . . . I think that the club teams will benefit. We will also see the national programme benefit long term as a result of improved football at the domestic level."

Calderon believes he was wrong to offer short term contracts to coaches last year and he has sought to rectify that situation with Darrell's appointment.

"They were put in an awkward position and I take responsibility for that. They were given one-year contracts and didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to display their talents," he said.

In what could be interpreted as a veiled reference to Trott, Calderon went on: "We had to make some radical decisions and some people unfortunately may feel that they were hard done by. But, ultimately, I think football is the biggest winner in this situation."

Darrell, meanwhile, was given a jocular warning as to what was expected of him in the years ahead.

"It's a three-year contract," said Calderon. "Obviously, it's based on performance.

"But I think going into any situation where there is a one-year contract does not bode well for long term stability of the game. It certainly does not make the person charged with the responsibility feel very comfortable - they have too much to prove."

Darrell believes he can live up to the expectations placed upon him.

"It might not seem so but I am excited to be back," he said. "I have missed it and I think I found out back then that it is something that I do pretty good and I am hoping to come back and do even better."