NUMBERS GAME IS ANSWER FOR MIKE
A SPECIAL presentation is held before the first game of a British & Irish Lions rugby tour.
Former playing stars and coaches are invited to award each squad member with the coveted red shirt as their place in the game’s history is rubber-stamped.
The presentation stresses the importance of being part of the Lions, a team established 132 years ago among the Home Nations and one that competes against rugby’s best every four years.
It is a tradition with a purpose and one that is now commonplace at the humble surroundings of Banbury United ever since manager Mike Ford arrived in 2015.
The club had just suffered an inevitable relegation into Step 4 and things had to change.
“Everybody locally within Oxfordshire thought that the football club was dead on its knees,” Ford told The NLP.
“I’d been to watch them a few times. It was dead, there was no atmosphere, no supporters, it was bleak.
The ground hadn’t been looked after, there’d been no
TLC on it for a number of years, no investment.
It was a club waiting to get relegated and it did that season.
“The job became available; I applied and got it, on a very small budget.
From day one
I said we needed to try and bridge the gap. I introduced a few things, one was squad numbers. I’m a massive rugby fan and had seen the Lions tour documentaries where they do it. We make it formal and get supporters and sponsors into the clubhouse after the last Thursday night training session before the season.
“What I wanted to try and do with my players is say that if you’re chosen as number seven, this is your number, be proud of it, wear it with pride, don’t give it up, make sure nobody takes it off you.
“Instead of being number seven one week and number two the next, you get to keep that number, it’s up to you to keep it. It creates some affinity between them, their number and the football club.”
‘Bridging the gap’ could be used as something of a motto to d e - scribe Ford’s impact at the club. He also introduced a radio station to cover their games live but, perhaps most importantly, implemented a bold playing style few would dare to try at the time.
In his first season in charge, Banbury gained an unexpected promotion back to Step 3 at the first attempt through the play-offs. “I said to the board that as a club we’re never really going to have the finances to be at the top of the table so we need to do something different,” Ford, a teacher by day, recalls, with the club now owned by the supporters. “We introduced a style of football that probably no-one was playing in the division at the time. I think it’s my job and my duty to get my team playing in the way a 21st century football team should be. I’ve got centre-halves that can play up front or on the wing. I’m not saying the way we do it is right, but it’s the way I want us to do it. “As you see on the TV, goalkeepers rolling it out to centre-halves and playing through the thirds of the pitch. I felt if we’re going to go toe-to-toe with teams with bigger budgets, they’ll be bigger physically, and I wanted some footballers in the team. I managed to get that.”
Successful
Ford had a successful playing career in the Football League with Cardiff City and Oxford United. He retired from full-time football in 2000 and began coaching in the youth set-up at the U’s before becoming reserve team manager, first team assistant and then first team caretaker-manager on two occasions.
Ford was eventually let go by Oxford and landed the manager’s job at Brackley Town but an 18-month spell didn’t go to plan.
“I approached it the wrong way thinking I needed to get it right because it might get me a job back in full-time football,” the former defender said. “I saw it as my last opportunity and didn’t cope with it very well.
“Players letting me know they couldn’t play on a Saturday because they’re going on a stag-do, I just couldn’t believe it. I’d fine players for it, I’d fine them for turning up unshaven because I didn’t understand Non-League football and I didn’t understand NonLeague players. Now, 16 years later, I have a huge amount of respect for Non-League footballers and clubs. I’ve worked with some really great lads. I want to continue doing this job for as long as possible.”
Just days after Brackley sacked him, Nick Platnauer, a former teammate at Cardiff and then manager of Bedford Town, asked if Ford could fill-in for his assistant, who was away. He stayed at the club and played the last 15 games of the season as they won promotion through the Southern League Premier play-offs.
“I ended up being a Conference South footballer at 39!” he added, before moving onto Oxford City where he played for three years and then managed for five, guiding them to promotion in 2012. Two years later he left the club in difficult circumstances.
Difficult
“I was absolutely drained,” he admitted. “I was in charge when the American fella Thomas Guerriero came over.”
He was jailed in May 2016 for 12 years for telemarketing and stock fraud.
Ford continued: “At the time I thought I don’t want to give up my job because of someone I didn’t trust but, looking back, I should have walked away. I think my reputation is still intact there, I think they appreciated the job I did and the team stayed in the Conference
North, but it was a very difficult period where I’m being told what to do by someone 6,000 miles away.
“I vowed to reinvent myself. When I started my job at Banbury I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.”
In their first season back at Step 3, Banbury finished in a club-record high of sixth, followed by ninth before “losing their way” and finishing 17th. But they were back in the promotion mix this year, a point off the Premier Central playoffs when the league finished.
“I want to make sure I keep my players together, they were brilliant for me,” he added.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of the players and they genuinely thought we could get into the play-offs and I’ve said there’s
only one way to find out and that’s having a go next year. “I’m 54 now, I’m an experienced manager at the level. Without blowing my own trumpet, I know what I’m doing. The best managers in the world… Jose Mourinho knows exactly what he’s doing, but he still gets the sack at football clubs. It doesn’t always work. I might end up losing my job in the middle of next season because it hasn’t worked out, but I know what I’m doing and I still enjoy it. It’s a passion and at the moment I’m really missing it.
“I think next season we won’t be under the radar and will be in some people’s eyes as a team that could challenge. Financially, we have no right to but we have to keep on trying to bridge the gap.”