Clarets Blog: Bond felt sadness not anger
7:42am Thursday 27th September 2012 in Sport
By Chris Flanagan, Sports reporter
IN all honesty, I didn’t know what reaction I was going to get. I was calling John Bond to see if he would be willing to talk about his time in charge of Burnley.
I cannot claim to have been around at the time when Bond presided over a controversial year-long reign at the Clarets helm.
But almost 30 years on it remained crystal clear that he was not popular with supporters who remembered those days.
Bond had not spoken about his time at Burnley for years, perhaps understandably. His time at the club did not go well.
When he answered the phone, he sounded a little frail.
This was 2010, with Burnley in the Premier League and about to play another of his former clubs, West Ham.
Happily though, Bond was perfectly polite and agreed to speak.
It was clearly pretty quickly that this was not a man harbouring a grudge against the club where he had been so at odds with many in the boardroom and on the terraces.
He insisted he was pleased to see the club back in the top flight, and wished them well.
Bond was clearly more comfortable speaking about West Ham than Burnley, but he didn’t hide from the fact that his Clarets tenure was far from perfect.
Significantly, he recognised that he had made mistakes during his time with Burnley, and was gracious enough to admit them.
“It is one of my biggest regrets,” he said, about his time at Turf Moor.
“I did do some ridiculous things with some of the signings I made. I tried to change things too quickly.”
Bond did not have to say all of that. He did not even have to agree to do the interview.
That he did said a lot in itself.
Not everything goes well in life, not everyone gets on.
But there comes a point when it is best to let it go.
Bond did that and made his peace.
I hope that part of his Clarets story is not overlooked.
