Martin Pike carries four premierships in his long-armed gait and short, quiet sentences. That he’s landed at Hastings, on the Mornington Peninsula, is at first a chin-scratcher. Here is the AFL’s most team-successful footballer, coaching a country club that has won a handful of games in three seasons. But it’s beneath the pine trees, beside the railway and down the street from punch-tough pubs that Pike has made his latest football stop. And he looks comfortable teaching.
“First two,” he says kicking the ball up to a pair of competing teammates. “Three goes at gettin’ it back to me .”In local footy, it’s early for such full-scale activity but there are no frowns. Actually, Hastings’ players smile a lot these days .Scoring a coach from the Brisbane Lions lifts morale among fellows who daydream at trade school of kicks and handballs. “He’s good so far,” last year’s best and fairest Mick Agnello says. “Just his presence. You can see blokes are going harder at it (the ball). ”Pike doesn’t roar, for he is trying to win their respect. He talks in his honest, voice of gravel.
“That’s it boys. Come over ‘ere and ‘ave a drink.”
A couple of tattooed, out-of-condition blokes pant like puppies.
A brave, muscular, blonde kid, who is hearing impaired, follows Pike with his eyes.
His grin says what he is thinking: “Martin Pike is my coach.”
PIKE narrowly failed to land an assistant role at St Kilda, following his 247-game career, ended by a painful groin last year.
Others in his position may have lobbed in a commentary box and started manufacturing quips for a quid.
But special comments men don’t make coaches, as much as the other way around.
Pike has set his stare on making it back to the AFL.
He has chosen an apprenticeship and planned to move his fiancé Amanda and children Benjamin, 5, and Kaitlin, 3, back to Victoria.
“I probably knew all along I wanted to coach,” he says. “This is the opportunity I needed.”
“Probably the hardest bit of this is coaching not just the team but the whole place, trainers, junior coaches.
“Anyway, it’s good training for whatever you do in life.”
He is student and teacher.
A glance back at Pike’s 13-seasons on the top shelf would have you tilt your head at thoughts of him leading by example.
In 1994, after two years at Melbourne he was delisted for lousy off-field behaviour.
Former Demons’ coach Neil Balme now recalls he was “raw, a bit of a larrikin” but you wonder what he called him under his breath as he bounced him out the door.
A young Pike was a Demon most likely to go travel to a Sunday morning training session via Saturday night.
Then Fitzroy picked him up and he became a trivia answer by winning the club’s last best and fairest trophy.
When Brisbane took eight former Fitzroy boys in the Lions’ merger, Pike, the most successful player from the previous season, wasn’t one of them.
Denis Pagan bounded along and North Melbourne soon had the former South Australian hard-head hooked on September sparkling wine.
After falling out with the Kangaroos post-1999 premiership, Pike went to Queensland and binged on success.
At the GABBA he was hard, loyal and popular, forward or back, running all match, hunting collisions and setting up play with thoughtful passing.
He was rarely beaten in one-on-one duels, a coach’s treasure.
The only time you saw him relaxing was at Grand Finals’ parades, in convertibles rounding Swanston, into Bourke.
When he reportedly headbutted a Lion official after the 2004 season, the club denied (and still does) it happened and gave him another contract.
Pike and his triple-championship club had shared too much to be spilt by minor social infractions.
The club officials’ silence was a tribute to their “Pikey”.
Perhaps they knew his social reputation for could be equalled by others (see Ben Cousins) but his rare success as a team player was more worthy of consideration.
By the time he stopped playing, Pike had kicked and handballed an AFL Sherrin in games 3500 times.
Balme was not surprised when he heard of Pike’s desire to coach.
“He’s always had a good relationship with his fellow players and that’s a good indication he’s a good communicator,” he explains.
“He’s a proven performer under pressure and he’s always had a good feeling for the game.”
Hastings has not bothered talking to Pike about disciplining his young players.
Pike says: “I might do what the AFL teams are doing now and let the players decide their team rules. They’re not professionals.
“Let the leadership group decide.”
Leadership group: a coach’s term.
President Kevin Miles says: “As far as our boys are concerned, he know all the tricks.”
Miles has been knocking on the doors of businesses in the town to tell them of an upcoming sponsors’ night (a couple of them became new corporate sponsors the day Pike signed).
“There’ll be 500 of them if everyone comes,” he half-smiles through a handlebar whiskers. “The town is buzzing.”
The local competition is also excited.
Crowds will grow.
Men with worn stubbie holders will turn up just to hear Pike address players at the breaks in games.
The thirty-three-year-old isn’t the only AFL retiree coaching in the Mornington Peninsula and Nepean Football league.
Former Saint Aussie Jones is playing-coach of Narre Warren, which competes in another division, against Berwick, led by ex-Cat and Crow Ronnie Burns.
Both are likely to play finals.
Pike, however, has taken over a badly performed team that has finished last for the past few seasons.
After becoming a league powerhouse in the 1990s, the Blues are suffering.
Defeat seems out-of-place at a club boasting former players John Coleman and Peter Everitt.
Pike is their hope.
“I want to pass on my knowledge,” he says, without mentioning he’s been mentored by Pagan and Leigh Matthews.
“The message is simple. It is a team game and you get more out of if you play for the team than for individual.”
He could be Allan Jeans.
“All I want is the blokes I pick every week to be committed to the cause.”
He may not realise it yet (this is his third training session) but Hastings suits him too.
When he coaches from the sidelines he will learn his supporters are not as pleasant as some of the Brisbane set, particularly the ones converted from Rugby Union.
Hard folk follow his mob.
They’ve got a lot of Pike about them, all dryer-than-toast humour and crossed-arms welcoming.
Officials and players wish he will lace up his boots and bares his teeth on the field of play but at the moment he is retired.
“You never say never but I’m pretty close to never.”
As the sun stops peeking through the pines, Pike notices a spindly young man called Jason Kestle, having a kick after everyone else has gone.
Kestle, perhaps the league’s most promising young player, moves around a football field as he drives his orange ute, faster than anyone else.
He didn’t know whether he would play at Hastings this season until Pike was appointed.
Now it’s almost dark and he’s still kicking and running.
Pike watches him with the experience of a man of who has given his life to football.
Satisfied, he stands and wanders into the new social room for a meeting with the leadership group, to work out a plan for his next victory.
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