Comment: Darren Moore has restored West Brom's identity

Training is imminent, he’s due to be coaching the first team shortly, but he’s happy to give the intrigued members of the press a trip down memory lane even though he’s already spent more than half an hour in their company.

“When I was a kid I grew up playing football in a tunnel that was 12 or 15ft long,” he recalled. “I was just playing under the lights, and didn’t have a grass area to play on

“It was friends, jumpers down as goalposts. We played in the evening and used the lights in an underpass.

“The trains ran above us, we got used to the noise. And we used the lights to light up the area, that was our floodlit pitch.

“That was Handsworth, it was what you knew. When I look back on it now it was great to go and play there for hours.”

There’s a reason why this story is important, and it’s the same reason why Moore immediately tapped into the Baggies fanbase, why his message of unity has been taken up by everyone at the end of a poisonous season.

Football is becoming an increasing global game, with foreign players being coached by foreign managers who work for foreign owners.

There is nothing wrong with that, the world is getting smaller in many ways, but it does challenge the engrained fingerprint of English clubs built up over decades.

Albion are no different, and in recent years they have undergone something of an identity crisis.

The fans were divided under Tony Pulis, with some claiming his style of football was at odds with the way the team should be playing.

When Jeremy Peace, who was born in West Bromwich, sold his majority stake to an absent Chinese owner, it was another attack on the club’s identity.

Now, instead of ‘West Bromwich Building Society’ emblazoned across the shirt, the sponsor is an Asian betting company no-one in Smethwick has ever used.

Last summer, instead of playing local non-league teams in pre-season, the Baggies went to Hong Kong.

The club still has plenty of ties to the community, and the sterling work of The Albion Foundation should not be ignored.

But as all football clubs increasingly reach out to the global market, those at home begin to feel more marginalised.

Moore, however, is that link to the community, a man who understands the needs of the area because he grew up in it. He knows what it means to fans if Saturday brings a win.

He’s also black. Of course we should live in a colour-blind world, but the simple fact is we don’t.

There are only four full-time BAME managers in the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs – Brighton’s Chris Hughton, Southend’s Chris Powell, Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo, and Carlisle’s Keith Curle.

And with Curle leaving Carlisle in the summer, that number could potentially drop to three.

It is a damning statistic considering one third of professional footballers in this country are black and ethnic minorities (BAME). It’s obvious something needs to change.

Diversity is an important aspect of the Baggies identity for a number of reasons.

Not only is Sandwell a multicultural and colourful district, but there is immense pride in these parts for Albion’s pioneering black players of the 1970s and 80s.

In recent years the club has woken up to their surroundings, and they deserve credit for helping set up an ‘Apna Albion’ group for Punjabi fans and the ‘Polish Baggies’ supporters group too.

This Sunday the club will be represented at the Vaisakhi celebrations in Handsworth Park to strengthen their ties with the local Sikh community.

Moore himself is entwined in the club’s proud history. He was first inspired to play football as a child when his dad called him in to the house to show him the Three Degrees playing on the television.

He had been playing cricket in the streets but after watching Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis he turned to his dad and said: ‘I am going to do that’.

He stayed true to his word and went on to create his own Albion history as a player.

His colour shouldn’t matter, but it does, and just like there was pride watching those three trailblazers in the late 1970s, the chest swells now watching Moore on the touchline because it’s a touchline with so few local faces, and even fewer black ones.

But more important than where he grew up or what colour his skin is, is his character.

Honest, humble, and hard-working, he has gone about the last few weeks in a professional and caring way.

Darren Moore epitomises everything West Bromwich Albion should stand for; he is someone the club and the fans can be proud of.

Whether he chooses to become a manager or not, and whether he ends up at The Hawthorns or somewhere else, in his short time in charge he has managed to restore the club’s identity that, over the past few years, had started to waver.