Alan Dowson: I’m recharged and ready for my next challenge

Alan Dowson Big Interview

By MATT BADCOCK

“I had to borrow my son’s jeans the other day!” Dowson, who left Woking at the end of February, tells The NLP as we sit down for a cup of tea and a sandwich in his living room. “If I wasn’t anywhere, I was in a Woking tracksuit. Everywhere I went, I was in a Woking tracksuit.

It could be a do in a pub, it could be anything.

“So I’ve had to find a pair of jeans, nicked my son’s trainers and got a shirt my dad had! The first thing I had to do was buy some clothes because I was always in my Woking gear.

“I met some great people at Woking. The sponsors Seymours have been excellent, they are ones who sent me to Las Vegas the other week.

“I thought it was on the beach –I haven’t got a clue where places are.

I said, ‘Ah I’ll have a relaxing time there’. Kelvin Reay (a director who left the club soon after Dowson) said, ‘It won’t be relaxing!’ It was an eye-opener! The Bellagio Hotel, the best rooms ever. It’s 24/7! I got a couple of quid, lost a couple of quid.

“I’ve come back, I’ve got my love of running again. I’ve been back up to Newcastle to see my mam and dad, had a game of bingo with the lads. It was nice, I went to watch Sunderland play too.”

Dowson has been recharging since his surprise Cards’ departure. He’s also been out running, having boxing lessons, coaching kids and, the day after we meet, even does a bit of labouring on a site for his former Hampton captain Leon Solomon.

“I’m 51 now so I’ll have a bash on these ladders and get on the roof,” Dowson says. “It was a reality check for me to say, ‘Football is your life, but there is life outside it’.

You go to shops, I coach kids, I went to see and learn from Karl Robinson at Oxford and it was great being in his office before the game.

“I’ve been talking to different people in the game. My best mate Graeme Jones, who is assistant manager at Newcastle.”

He even needed to hitch a lift home with long-time assistant manager – and Sky Sports commentator – Martin Tyler from Wembley after his car blew up not far from the stadium before the FA Cup semi-final between Chelsea and Crystal Palace.

“Even when I left Hampton & Richmond, we played in the playoff final and I went to Woking the following week,” Dowson says.

“I’ve had no break. Even with family holidays, which I regret a bit now.

“Other managers say to me, ‘Dowse, you need to switch off ‘. I never – I just went the full whack. I’d be on the beach and the phone would go.

HARD YARDS:Alan Dowson, second right, with Leon Solomon, right, on the site

“It would be someone like Josh Casey, so I’d talk to him. Then I’d talked to someone else. You think you might miss out on a player and before you know it, your holiday is finished.

“I realise now about taking your foot off the gas for a bit. Always work your socks off when you can but also have your break. I feel more relaxed than ever and I am ready to come back.

“All the clubs I’ve been at I’ve had a promotion. I want another. I want to get my record back to how it was before Covid.”

He jokes his new outlook might be a “load of cobblers” when he does get back in. But the period out has also allowed time for reflection on his Woking tenure.

He took over in 2018 with the club freshly relegated out of Non-League‘s toppflight.

Within a season the former Walton & Hersham and Kingstonian boss had continued his record of a promotion at every club.

Dowson says he watched Darren Sarll’s Woking against Boreham Wood on TV and realised that everyone else had moved on, and now it was time he did too. He wishes Sarll – “he was one of the first on the phone when I had Covid” – and the rest of the management team well.

TRUSTED NO.2: Martin Tyler

He would have done one thing differently. With no relegation places at Step 1 last season he decided not to spend the kitty on offer from owner John Katz, preferring to save it for this season and he believes the poor run contributed to this season’s departure.

“Crikey, when people say, ‘Why do you have an assistant?’” he says. “I thought I was more clever than Martin Tyler. We got promotion, had the FA Cup run, we were pushing up near the top before Covid came in and then the following season they pulled the plug on relegation.

“The owner, John Katz, said here’s £100,000 go and spend it and I never did.

I said, ‘No,no,no, I will use the youngsters’. But you lose 12 in 15 games then people turn. We still got to the FATrophy semi-final by beating Torquay. But you know when you know that was the wrong thing to do, in the summer I knew.

“So I tried to work doubly as hard in the summer to get the team together for full-time football, help with the training ground, help with the sponsors for the shirts, help with everything I possibly could to get the structure thinking it was a three-year project.

“But when I had my bad time this year, it didn’t take long for people to turn because of what I’d done the previous year which was a mistake.

“Before Covid I had the best record in Non-League. But I haven’t now. It’s up to me to get back in the hot-seat.”

He’s proud of the money they generated from selling players like Tahvon Campbell into the Football League. He also admits, in hind-sight, a slight regret at turning down an approach to speak to a Football League club earlier this season. But that’s the past.

And now he wants to look forward. Dowson put in the yards to reach Non-League’s top flight, a different beast from his playing days. And he’s been looking for clues to previous successes.

“If you look at who, in my opinion, have been the best in Non-League football are the two lads at Sutton,” Dowson says. “You can do it the Sutton way, they don’t have millions.

“Two honest lads, Matt Gray and Jason Goodliffe. I’ve been invited down to watch a couple of times. They are lads off the street who work very hard and their team work hard.

“The job they’ve done, I think it’s been the biggest achievement in Non-League football. To get a club promoted when all the money is against them, to get them in the League Two play-offs, where they are now, I think is amazing.

“I went to Wembley to watch them (in the Papa John’s Trophy final) –I was singing songs and everything.

“I just think what Sutton have done shows you can do it. I’ve been trying to pick their brains. It’s all down to hard work.”

He’s also enjoyed watching the success of friend Simon Haughney at Step 5 Hanworth Villa.

“It was great seeing my mate’s team score a last-minute winner to win promotion,” Dowson says.

“It’s nice seeing people like that do well. I was in Vegas and he rang me, ‘Dowse, I need a centre half ‘. I said, ‘I’m inVegas, man!’ He said, ‘I don’t care where you are. So I rang Nathan Collier and said, ‘Do my mate a favour, will you?’ He helped them win the league. You get satisfaction seeing people like that do well.

“He’s gone the whole season unbeaten! He went to Hanworth Villa when they were bottom of the league, they’re unbeaten the whole season, he’s changed the club around.

“I think, ‘fair play to him’. He was very loyal to me at Hampton – he runs Onside Coaching, coaching all the kids. I said to him one day, ‘I think you should be a manager!’

“I rang up Walton & Hersham and he got the job. Then he’s gone to Hanworth Villa and he’s sensational – a motivator, a leader of men. He’ll do great next season.

“When I was at Hampton he used to listen a lot and people say he’s like me – he is.

He adds: “I went down to Hampton & Richmond and I think people thought I was sniffing a round. But Gary McCann is one of my best mates in football and he asked us down. I’m not interest-ed in sitting behind someone’s dug-out hoping he fails so I can get a job.

“There are so many rumours going around. I haven’t been offered a job to get back in. It’s only now I’m saying I want to get back in.”

There aren’t many managers who throw themselves into the role and the heart of a club like Dowson does.

In every job he does a huge amount for the community, takes part in fundraisers, ran laps of Woking’s Kingfield pitch, gets signed memorabilia for auctions and dinners, organises player visits to elderly homes and even did a wing walk for a local Woking hospice.

“I try to do it a different way at all the clubs I go to where I work my socks off on players, man-management and coaching,” he says.

“But I always have a belief, at this level, if you haven’t got the people – and you don’t meet the people – you haven’t got a football club.”

The day after we meet, a text comes through. He’s off to a Buckingham Palace garden party this May with the charity work.

“I’ll have to buy a suit – lol!”