Stalwart Durban City goalkeeper Darren Keet has called time on his playing career and will retire after the current Betway Premiership season has been completed.
Keet helped Durban City to the Nedbank Cup title on Saturday with a 2-1 victory over TS Galaxy in the final, and immediately announced he will retire at the end of the season.
This is despite the 36-year-old being one of the standout goalkeepers in the current campaign, having kept 12 clean sheets in 26 league games.
“It is nice to go out on a high, to finish the season on a high and then call it quits on the career,” Keet told Michael Morton. “It is great to end it off with a winners’ medal. The Nedbank Cup was my first trophy and will be my last.
“It has been difficult with the family being in Cape Town and me in Durban. I want to get started on my coaching career and there are plans in place to start with that.
“There definitely could be more seasons as a player, but maybe it is time for new adventures. Coaching is next, I won’t tell you where yet, we will figure that out later.”
Keet says it is the tough times that he will remember most from a career that included a successful spell in Belgium with Kortrijk.
“The trophies are always special. But to be honest, the hard times are the ones you remember. The fighting week in, week out. We fought so hard this week for this game.”
Keet was a junior with Ajax Cape Town and also played at amateur sides Edgemead Goodwood and Bothasig before getting a chance with Santos’ reserve team and then Vasco da Gama, all in Cape Town.
But it was when he moved to BidVest Wits and made his Betway Premiership debut in the 2008/09 season that things really took off for him.
He had two spells with Wits, making 139 starts across both. In Belgium, he played for Kortrijk, making 142 starts, and OH Leuven, where he made 10 starts, before returning to South Africa to play for Cape United, where he made six starts, and then Cape Town City, where he made 105 starts.
He moved to Durban City at the start of this season and so far has 33 starts across all competitions, for a career tally of 435. Durban City have four more games to play this campaign.
He won the Betway Premiership with BidVest Wits in the 2016/17 season, as well as the Nedbank Cup, Carling Knockout and MTN8, all with Wits.
He won the last of his 13 Bafana Bafana caps in 2020.