John Bond At Burnley
By Dave Thomas
November 4 2012
It’s a name that stirs the same emotions and reactions as that of Bob Lord. There are those who say that both were villains. There are those like me that take the view that they are both much maligned. It may well be true that Bob Lord in his final years ran the club into the ground and it was near insolvent; it is perfectly true that he was bluff, rude and dismissive, but he was also the man who spent years building it up into the club that was so successful until the mid-seventies.
John Bond was possibly a fish out of water at Burnley. He was John Jackson’s appointment and if blame is to be attached to anyone, then it is wrong to apportion blame solely to John Bond for the mess that the club was in by the end of his season. It was a small group of directors and after hours of talking to one of them, Derek Gill, and having been through his diaries of the time, it is abundantly clear that the chemistry that existed between all the characters in the Bond drama was totally wrong. It was a deeply flawed appointment. The key moment in Bond’s tenure came after an early season defeat to Crewe. The fans were furious already. The defeat was an eye-opener. The directors knew that the appointment was a mistake and stayed in the boardroom until the small hours debating the situation. In their hearts they knew they should dismiss him, but they didn’t.
No Nay Never Vol 2 has the full story and makes great use of the riveting Gill diaries. Derek Gill, who learned of the Bond appointment from a day old newspaper in Tenerife, as well as giving me a copy of his 135+ page diary of the time, also gave me two volumes of bound programmes. In the back of one of them were some old faded clippings. One of them related to a Granada Kick-Off TV programme when Bond in the studio answered his critics. It was only when one of these volumes fell on the floor as I pulled out another book from underneath, that I found the cuttings in the back. BOND BLASTS BACK one of them is headed on Saturday January 21st, 1989 ‘John Bond the man Clarets loved to hate admitted last night that he made mistakes during his short stay in charge of Turf Moor. He faced the cameras to defend criticism of the disastrous 12 months four years ago which saw Burnley crash from the Third to the Fourth Division for the first time in their history. On Granada TV’s Kick Off programme he confessed he made errors but he said he had no guilty feelings over anything he did. Bond, in the TV station’s Manchester studio faced a grilling from members of Burnley FC Supporters Club at the Centre Spot. His biggest blunder he said was in sacking Frank Casper as coach and bringing only ‘his own’ men in. Bond was also forced to admit it was a mistake selling Brian Laws and giving a free transfer to Lee Dixon – both defenders now are starring for Nottingham Forest and Arsenal respectively. And he admitted it was a mistake to sign players such as Gerry Gow, Dennis Tuert and Joe Gallagher who he claimed was not fit when he joined the Clarets. But first he reacted to a claim made by Burnley veteran Supporter Michael Rumney asked: “Despite your lack of success as manager why do you always blame directors when you leave a football club?” Bond replied: Well I wouldn’t like to say that. If you were to speak to Sir Arthur South at Norwich, Harold Walker at Bournemouth and Peter Swales at Manchester City, maybe they would not agree with you. I think I have had my fair share of success within the game. And I think that at certain clubs I have done well.” Another fan Derek Adamson asked: You had Brian Laws and Lee Dixon at Burnley and released them both. Do you not consider this a serious misjudgement as they are both now playing for top First Division clubs?” Bond said: “Just let me tell you. I hold my hand up about that but I am prone to making mistakes as you are or anyone else is in life. At that particular time we sold Brian Laws and I thought we got good money for him. I’m not saying we got the earth but we got fairly good money. Dixon – I didn’t see it that way and I just let Lee Dixon go.” Duncan Wood asked: “You brought another three Johns to the club, Benson, Doherty and Sainty – do you think your loyalty to these three contributed to your downfall?” Bond replied: “Well I don’t see it that way. I think John Sainty was a great coach with me at Manchester City and I don’t think he lost his way at all when he came to Burnley.” Presenter Elton Welsby then interrupted and pointed out that Bond had told him earlier that using the benefit of hindsight he would have taken someone with him who knew the club. Bond continued: “Well, I think that’s the thing I did wrong. Maria McWilliam asked: “You left Burnley with nothing, not even its once proud youth policy. Do you not feel guilty about this? Bond replied: “No I don’t feel guilty about anything. I don’t think they had any youth policy. You know as well as I do the players Burnley had when I took over. And I must tell you with all this talk that has gone on that I bought players to the club, the cost of bringing in players was £308,000. And I’ll tell you what they got back. They got £150,000 for Kevin Reeves in insurance compensation and they pulled in another £575,000 on other sales. You ask me how they found themselves in so much debt and I will ask you the same question because I don’t know. Paul Grace asked: “Why did you offer lucrative contracts to players who then left the club in dire financial circumstances especially as some hardly played for the club?” Bond: “I will sit here now and hold my hand up and tell you I made mistakes with the likes of Gerry Gow and even the likes of Dennis Tuert. I certainly made a mistake with Joe Gallagher. But something you don’t know is that it wasn’t entirely down to me. When we got Joe down to the club I told the doctor I didn’t think he was fit. We took him to a specialist in Manchester and the doctor came back and said he was OK. I didn’t agree with the doctor but by that time we had to keep him.” It’s a selective account of what was presumably a 30 minute programme and Bond probably doesn’t come out of it all that well. The £575,000 he referees to includes the sales of Brian Laws, Trevor Steven and Mal Waldron. The purchase of Joe Gallagher is probably one of the great mess-ups of Burnley player purchases. He had knee problems when he was bought but with all player purchases it is a case of buyer beware. The doctor in question was the club doctor, Doc Iven. Derek Gill has always been one to question the medical that Doc Iven gave Gallagher. One of the tests was to have him running up and down a flight of stairs. Derek has since frequently asked: “Since when has a game of football been played on a flight of stairs? Clearly there is more to all this than the newspaper account of the TV programme. It’s pretty much all in NNN Vol 2 where great use was made of Derek Gill’s diaries. The best bits are probably unprintable alas. There’s an eye-opening book in there somewhere. Strange how football repeats itself; in just the same way that the board knew very early that Bond was not the right man for Burnley, so did certainly one director realise quite soon that Eddie Howe was “not the right man for Burnley.” Both boards stuck with their decision. Whilst Howe was in no way a disaster as Bond was, nevertheless it’s certainly my contention that the club was going nowhere with him at the helm. A few copies of Vol 2 still available from me, email beehivethomasd@aol.com or call 0113 2555350 |
The season progressed to the stage where Burnley played some superb football under him, Reeves was a superb signing. But he received a career-terminating injury. When his goals stopped so did Billy Hamilton’s, a great striker who had benefited from Reeves’ presence alongside him. From that point on the team struggled, attendances dropped, the money in the bank dried up, and the season ended in acrimony. Bond was the scapegoat and villain.
Leighton James who claimed in a national newspaper that during his time at Burnley Bond was out of touch with the man in the street. Bond retorted: ‘Burnley were not exactly top of the First Division when I took over. They were in the Third Division and maybe it was other people who were out of touch as well as me’.
Frank Casper was in charge I believe just before I took over and maybe I should have kept Frank with me. I had no grudge against him. It was just that I wanted to keep my own men with me and maybe that was a big mistake not keeping him at the club because I do believe you do need somebody who has been at the club and who knows the club.”If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
You say that some people's views are much maligned.
Well of course they are - the evidence is there in your own article, as to what a fck-up of a manager he was for us, as he even admits it.
Yes, Jackson has to take some of the blame. And who knows how things would have panned out if Kevin Reeves didnt get injured. But i dont buy it when people intimate that Bond wasnt really to blame, because that's just quite frankly, rubbish.
Gone, but never forgotten, nor forgiven.