'I'll be eternally grateful' - Kevin Bond confirms Bristol Rovers departure and details reasons..by Daniel Hargraves.i2-prod.bristolpost.co.uk/incoming/article9271017.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/0_3550860-1.jpgHaving the likes of Tottenham, Newcastle, Southampton and Aston Villa on a CV when working in football is no mean feat and when it comes to resumes, Kevin Bond's is seriously impressive.
The 66-year-old played and has coached at some of England's most famous football clubs and so, over the course of two stints at Bristol Rovers, having the coach's footballing nous has been a privilege for the League One outfit.
However, as reported by Bristol Live on Wednesday, Bond has made the decision to step away from Rovers having re-joined on a part-time basis in November to assist Andy Mangan during his period as caretaker manager before Matt Taylor's appointment in December as the first-team coach remained with the Gas for the remainder of the season.
Although it was his decision to depart and an offer was there from Taylor for the experienced coach to continue in BS7, Bond felt it was the right time to leave a club he holds in extremely high regards.
"It’s come to the end of the season and I feel like the time is right for me to call it a day at the club," the recently departed Rovers coach told Bristol Live. "My time is done here. As you know, I came back initially for Andy Mangan who had asked me to come back. He was obviously trying to get the job on a full-time basis if he could. He was short staffed so asked me to come which I was happy to do. I like Andy, I think he’s good at his job, and I think one day he’ll go on to be a good manager.
"I came back for him but in reality he was never going to get the job. I can see that now. I think the owners wanted to make a bit of a statement in terms of making, what they saw, as their own signing in terms of the manager.
"At that time I expected to leave along with everybody else at the football club and surprisingly, from my point of view, Tom Gorringe said that Matt would be happy to have a conversation with me which I was obviously happy to do and after having a conversation he was happy for me to stay if I was.
"It would have been new to Matt. Obviously everything and everybody was new to him and I’m sort of familiar with everything so I agreed to stay on and enjoyed my time working with him. Supporting him and trying to help in whatever way I could, whether that was on the training ground or in any other way talking with the coaches who were great and all of the players who I obviously knew anyway who have always been brilliant with me.
"So it was fine. I sort of think Matt’s well and truly got his feet under the table and understands Bristol Rovers now and I think it would be the right thing to do so I’m happy to call it a day really."
i2-prod.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/article8298553.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/0_JMP_Hartlepool_United_v_Bristol_Rovers_RS_213JPG.jpgHowever, regarding Bond's departure and the reasons for it, the offer was there for him to continue and it's been his decision to leave with a roundtrip the best part of 200 miles from Southampton the coach's commute while, in his words, there's not really such thing as being part-time in football.
On discussions with Taylor, the 66-year-old explained: "I had a conversation with Matt just before the end of the season. I popped in to see him. I stayed for Matt really. That was the reason I stayed, basically to support him and help him in whatever way he or I thought that I could. At the end of the season I popped in to see him because really I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and reflect on any of that because the games are coming thick and fast and you’re dealing with the most important thing which is trying to win football matches.
"A few days before the end of the season I popped in to see him to see how he felt about how he thought I had done in that role of trying to support and help him and he said that he was pleased and happy with the job that I had done for him and would be more than happy for that to continue.
"That was really nice to hear, however you also have to take into account how the board would feel about it and there are going to be other things that come into play. The number of staff at the football club, financial aspect. The fact that when I agreed to stay, I did say to Matt that, because of the amount of driving I was doing, did I necessarily feel the need to come in on a Monday morning if we didn’t have a game on the Tuesday which is like a second day of recovery. For example, would I need to be in on those days? Matt said 'absolutely not.'
"I want to qualify that by saying, with all of this, as I said to Matt, if you want me to come in on a Sunday because we’ve got a game on a Tuesday, I’m absolutely happy to do that. I just don’t want to be bound to come in when there’s not much happening on particular days because I’m sort of at that stage and he completely understood and agreed.
"In reality, I was in everyday at Christmas and you can’t be part-time in football. I wasn’t in anyway but I think going forward the owners, I don’t know if they want more of a commitment, I don’t know if that’s the right word, I’m not sure how well that sits with them so I think that they might have found it difficult with me which I understand and respect. We had a conversation after the end of the season about that and the last thing I ever wanted to do was cause Matt a problem so I think it’s the best thing all-round, if I’m honest, that now would be the right time for me to walk away."
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Kevin_Bond.jpg/300px-Kevin_Bond.jpgBond is in agreement that the Gas have to get their business right, providing a relevant anecdote.
"[It's a] Massive summer," the former Rovers coach declared. "Funnily enough, in one of my first coaching jobs in the early 2000s, Harry Redknapp took over the reigns at Portsmouth in the Championship and in the space of one summer changed the entire team. He must have signed, I don’t know, 10, 12 players, more than that perhaps, and assembled a completely brand new team which, in our experience, very rarely works.
"The key in all of this is that they were good players, especially for the level that we were at. He managed to blend and build them into a team and we had a very successful season. So it can happen but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it does take time and I think in an ideal world you’d come in and maybe have three or four changes to make and in the next window a couple more and so on. But as it’s worked out here, we’ve got a lot of players out of contract, quite a few loan players, so there’s quite a lot of work to be done on the recruitment side of it.
"Matt, George Friend and whoever else is involved in the recruitment side of it, is going to be hugely important. At the end of the day, most of the teams that are top of the league, no matter what league they’re in, are because they’ve got the better players, they cost the most money, they earn the highest wages. Mostly, that’s the way it pans out.
"Realistically you can have an odd season where a particular manager or particular group of players punch massively above their weight, of course you can and that’s what we all hope for. I suspect that our budget will be mid-table or below and anything above that from a position at the end of the season from the team is going to be an enormous bonus. That’s how I see it."
On working with Taylor, Bond added: "Matt is a man of great integrity. I like him a great deal. Knows exactly what he wants from a footballing perspective. Straight. So I have a lot of time for him.
"It has been difficult. There’s no getting away from that. There have been difficult times, I think particularly when players have known their future and if their futures are uncertain or not at Bristol Rovers anymore, it doesn’t make for a great atmosphere or environment at the football club. It’s sort of normal. It’s happened at a number of football clubs I’ve been at before but it’s not ideal.
"I think he inherited a squad that was clearly somebody else’s squad and he needs to be given the opportunity to bring in a number of players he feels will fit into what he wants to produce on the field, and he should be, and I think once he’s given that opportunity we’ll see a better version of a Matt Taylor football team on the pitch."
www.dailyecho.co.uk/resources/images/18065126.jpg?type=mds-article-962"The end of the season we had when we won promotion, I will never forget," the 66-year-old declared. "I thought I had seen most things in football until I tumbled across that last day of the season which if I ever explain it to people who never heard about what we did. It’s properly like a story you could make a film out of; it was bizarre.
"What we did at the end of the season really, when you think that we were only in the automatic promotion places was about 15 minutes to go on the last day of the season, you couldn’t make it up.
"I remember standing on the touchline when the seventh goal went in and I’m sort of thinking to myself, ‘really, has that just happened?’ It was absolutely unbelievable. So I’ll never forget that.
"In my time there, everybody from Wael to the new owners now and all of the people involved at the club, players particularly, they have all been fantastic with me, really respectful. I enjoyed my time there so much. I would end up speaking to supporters who went away from home, you sort of give five minutes if you can when you get off the bus. Our support away from home was amazing. Our support at home when we’re going well and have got a bit of momentum is also amazing.
"Everyone was fantastic to me, really brilliant. Some of my best football experiences have come at Bristol Rovers so I thoroughly enjoyed my two stints there and I will be eternally grateful."
With summer around the corner and his departure from Rovers still extremely recent, Bond is only thinking about how he will enjoy the pending rays as far as the future is concerned but admitted that if something he liked the sound of presented itself he would consider it.
From the Gas' point of view though, they're losing an individual who has been quoted as "a legend" by multiple people at the club and, although his contract stated "part-time", the experience and knowhow of the coach as well as his presence is going to be a major void to fill.
