Legend on a legend

  • by Staff Writer
  • Monday, 25th February 2013

Former West Ham United captain and manager, Billy Bonds, has admitted that he used to feel in awe of team mate Bobby Moore.

Bonds, 66, holds the record for West Ham appearances - some 804 matches between 1967 and 1988. That's 158 more than Bobby Moore - fourth in the list behind Frank Lampard (674) and Trevor Brooking (647) - managed during his playing career.

Yet Bonds, speaking to Talksport on the 20th anniversary of Moore's passing revealed that despite playing alongside each other for seven years, the World-Cup winning England captain - who he first met as a schoolboy - remained his sporting hero.

“I was always in awe of Mooro a little bit but he was just such a nice bloke, that's all you could say about him," said Bonds. "You could think of hundreds of footballers nowadays who haven't achieved half of what he has, but aren't as down to earth as he was. He was a sporting icon for me, Bobby.

"I first met Bobby at a very impressionable age. I lived on an estate in South London and was only 13 years old. We'd won a trophy and we used to train at our local school; our manager said he had a treat for us; somebody was coming over to present the medals.

"We did a few training skills and then Mooro presented us with our medals. He must have just broken into the West Ham side then so we didn't know much about him, we were mainly all Charlton fans

"In those days he was still in his teens, Mooro. A great looking lad, blonde and with an aura about him. His girlfriend Tina also turned up; she didn't look half-bad either!"

Having moved from Charlton to West Ham in 1967 - a year after England, with Moore at the helm, had won the World Cup - Bonds suddenly found himself playing alongside three national heroes. But it was Moore with whom he developed the strongest relationship.

"He was usually one step ahead of everybody," added Bonds. "His positional sense was fantastic - as it had to be, as Mooro wasn't quick. But he was always in the right place at the right time, a great interceptor of the ball.

"As a captain he wasn't one to shout and bawl at you, or a great leader as such - for us it was just the fact that he was Bobby Moore, a sporting icon.

"By the time I went over to West Ham and played with him he'd won the FA Cup, the Cup Winners Cup and the biggest cup in the world, the World Cup. He was probably one of the most famous people in the world, along with Pele. He achieved so much."

Some 25 years or so later Bonds, then the manager of West Ham happened upon a chance meeting with his former team mate - in Grimsby, of all places. And as so many others have said this week, the fact that England's only World Cup-winning captain was even there was a major disappointment to Bonds.

"So much more could have been done for him," he surmised. "I last saw Mooro at Grimsby and you know what that's like on a cold Tuesday night in November! We drew 1-1 and he must have been doing the radio upstairs with Jonathan Pearce.

"I was sat on a wall after the game just thinking about a few things on my own in the pitch dark and he wandered down from the top of the stands to say hello. Typical of him; we just sat there chatting about the game and life in general.

"He didn't look great then and he died within the next three or four months. You just wondered what Bobby Moore was doing in Grimsby on a cold, wet night. He should have been used a lot more, they could have made much more of him.

"There's always the question about why Mooro wasn't knighted. I wasn't one of Mooro's drinking pals, I didn't go out with him too much but you just wonder. Some people throw up the argument that he got involved with the wrong kind of people in the east end of London, but he should have still been an ambassador for the game."


Sign of the times: cards placed in the Bobby Moore stand ahead of tonight's match


Despite the game being tinged with a certain amount of sadness, Bonds is looking forward to tonight's London derby against Tottenham during which supporters in the Bobby Moore stand will be asked to raise cards that form a mosaic of Moore.

"It'll be a great night," he said, "Spurs at home is always a great game.

"I'm sure everybody will be paying their respects to him and just thinking about that blonde-haired man sitting in the middle of defence, sometimes with his hands on his hips or down on his thighs and just looking at the game. They'll be reminiscing about a great, great player."

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