IN A time of managers trotting out platitudes and clichés, Alex Pike is a hurricane of fresh air. The 52-year-old could be considered one of Non-League‘s real characters.
But while the Gosport Borough manager may shoot from the lip, wind-up opposition managers with tongue-in-cheek digs and make bold predictions – he said Boro would beat Hemel Hempstead by four goals in last season’s Southern Premier play-off final – he at least speaks his mind.
Take “box-ticking” referees and the dreaded assessors, for example.
“One of my customers is a referee at a good level,” says Pike, who runs his own corporate clothing and football kit business. “I went down there the other week to deliver some stuff to him.
“Out on his desk he had ten reports. All these referees are coached now and he was analysing those ten reports because he knew had the assessor on Saturday and he wanted to make sure he pleased that assessor. That to me is totally wrong.
“When I started out referees were personalities and characters – the cream rose to the top and we got rid of the rubbish.
Robots
“I understand the FA wanting to close the gap between the top and the bottom but we’ve made a load of robots.”
Pike says he wants to go into the administration side of the game when he retires from management to give a manager’s point of view.
“We can maybe shoulder some of the blame because when managers and players pack up we don’t seem to go into administration,” he says.
“I look at a lot of chief executives in football and they are all referees. To me that gives a very myopic view.
“I’ve been involved in the game for 30-odd years. A referee who’s been involved for 30 years pitches up and gets a silver salver: Thanks very much for your service.
“Managers are forgotten. And everyone seems to think we get paid for the job as well. Out of my 30 years, 28 of them I never took a penny. But I don’t know any referees that have ever gone out and turned their match fees down – not even in pre-season!
“I like to do after dinner speeches for referee societies. That’s where I tell them we’ve got a lot in common – we’ve both progressed through knowing nothing about football! Refs quite like that one.”
Pike’s progression has been very successful. Two broken legs by the time he was 21 prompted him to give up playing for the sake of his job in the police. It was then he had his first management job, taking Dorset Police Reserves in the Bournemouth Wednesday League.
After winning that they set up their own club sponsored by a local security company. MJ Security Aces swept all before them with five consecutive promotions before Dorset Premier League Holt United came knocking. He did well again and then it was off to Wimborne.
“At that moment in time I felt I wasn’t good enough or had the experience to be a manager at Wessex League level so I took Nick Jennings, the ex-Portsmouth player with me,” he says.
“After two or three years Nick decided to step to one side, went to the board and said, ‘Alex is ready’.
“In my first season as a manager on my own I won the Wessex League, the Dorset Senior Cup and the FA Vase. It was a good treble in my first year – and it’s gone backwards ever since then.”
Not long before that 5-3 Vase win against Guiseley – voted in the top 50 all-time Wembley finals – injury suffered on duty in a crash while in pursuit of vehicle ended his police career.
It was then he set up his own business and had spells in the dug-outs of Bournemouth Poppies, Hamworthy, back to Wimborne, and in December 2005 to hometown club Gosport Borough.
Typically for Pike, they won the Wessex League right away and back-to-back promotions now sees their first campaign in the Skrill South this year.
Pike is effusive in his praise of his backroom team at Gosport, including assistant Mick Catlin. “Me and Mick have been together for a long, long time,” he says. “We’ve almost become telepathic. The buck may stop with me but Mick will always have an input.
Challenges
“When we compare our scraps of paper, nine times out of ten we say the same thing. I don’t regard him as an assistant-manager, I regard him as a joint-manager and I take on board what he’s got to say. When I first went into management I would never have done that. I was very arrogant and I have to put my hands up for that.”
Pike says his ego has diminished over the years – seeing the amount of friends at his wedding made in football made him realise what the game has given him – and there’s always challenges ahead.
Gosport are still finding their feet at Step 2, although the manager has faith they will beat the drop, and they’ve got an FA Trophy quarter-final away to North Ferriby to look forward to.
Pike knows how tough facing the Skrill North side on their own patch will be, but a win would inch him closer to being the first manager to win both the FA Trophy and the Vase.
“I was a bit disappointed to see Guiseley go out of the Trophy at Aldershot last weekend – it would have been nice to play them again,” he says of his previous Wembley opponents.
“I take the Missus up to Yorkshire every year for her birthday. Two or three years ago we happened to be driving past Guiseley so we popped in. The groundsman was there and when I told him who I was he said, ‘Oh, let me take you around’. I always remember going in the clubhouse where they’ve got all these pictures from when they beat Gresley Rovers in the FA Vase final in 1991.
“But there was this great big hole on the wall. I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘That’s when you beat us – we’ve taken those ones down!’
“That’s what I love about football – the diversity of people and the characters.”
