The Sydney Ice Dogs have announced that former captain and stay-at-home defenceman Tomas Manco will be joining the team’s coaching staff as an assistant coach for the 2023 AIHL season. This comes after an impressive 14-year playing career where Manco played a key role in the Ice Dogs’ success, including a Goodall Cup win in 2013.
 

 
Manco’s career highlights include 95 points (17 goals and 78 assists) and 491 penalty minutes over 332 career games. He also represented Australia in six World Championships, including a gold medal win in the Division 2 tournament in Melbourne where he scored a goal and an assist.

But what some people may not know about Tomas Manco is his background in coaching. Manco started his coaching career at just 15 years of age, assisting his father coaching the Sydney Under 13s team, which he progressed into assistant coaching the NSW Peewee team winning a presidents trophy in 2005. At just 19 years of age he was the head coach of the Sydney Bears Under 18 Midget team.  His focus as he got older was back towards the youth development of our game.  Manco was instrumental in introducing small area games at the Mites and Atoms level as an official program with great success.  In 2014 he returned to coaching at the state level as assistant coach of the NSW Peewee team for three years winning 2xsilvers and finally gold in 2016.