Me too: RIP John Bond, never to be forgotten

Before I begin, it's worth everyone adding a healthy helping of salt, as my memory is notoriously fallible in matters of the Nodge, but here goes. Also please bear in mind that these are the memories of a teenage kid following the news from the other side of the country, in an era where there was much less coverage.

getting it out of the way first: his son Kevin was not s**t, not at all. Anyway.............

I was only 11 or 12 when he took over from Saunders. I wasn't happy about Ron going, early heroes and all that, but I was soon dragged under Bondy's spell. As I recall, Supermac joined early, and then JB started hoovering up just about everything he could from Bournemouth, which was a little alarming at first but we soon began to go along with it. The Boyer/Supermac partnership was something to see. If you're too young, imagine a modern two-man strikeforce and how much work they get through - and then take just about all the work one of those strikers does, and give it to the other! Boyer never stopped, and MacDougall was absolutely firkin lethal when he was on his game.

And he was a name in the game, MacDougall, when he joined us - a proper, bigtime, star-quality name, and we hadn't had (m)any of those at the time. Suddenly we looked as though we might be a big club. And then came Peters, and Suggett from WBA, the man who'd reduced the famous Don Revie to crying on the pitch when he scored just about the most offside goal of all time and robbed Leeds of the title in so doing. I digress, but the gist is there. Imagine if, come the January window, Hoots signs a couple of big name current internationals: we'd all think, Hello, What's This? - that was the kind of change in status that JB brought us back then.

He courted publicity and he gave good value. He was a regular TV pundit while with us. He could be a little trying: he would correct his own grammar, usually changing good grammar for bad: "There are good players, sorry, there is good players there" is one that stuck in the mind, and that kind of thing was more noticeable in those days. Alan "they've been quite laconic/he's decimated the bar there" Hansen wouldn't have lasted a month back then.

And his tactics were really quite dashing. When you looked at the XI on any given Saturday, you could only guess who'd be playing where. In fact you can still see this, occasionally, in Pink Un Name That Team puzzles, where we seem to be playing four right backs, but it worked as often as it didn't. He was a cavalier, a maverick, and he always seemed convinced that whoever the oppo, he'd worked out a way we could beat them, and he looked surprised when we didn't.

I'm going on a bit so I'll wrap it up. He was a massive shot in the arm for our club, and even the Grant, Roeder, Gunny and Doncaster period couldn't take away what he created. I don't think we can ever quantify what he did for NCFC. The club you young 'uns love might be an entirely different one without the Bond Effect. He will be sadly missed, and mourned for a long time in this little corner of North Wales.

I've missed out something important. Bollocks. What was it?

RIP JB, and thank you so incredibly much.

Posted By: Sugbad The Bad on September 26th 2012 at 19:21:07

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