Sad to hear. I think he captained them when they were all a little worse for wear after their cup final win, when we played them to clinch promotion in 1980.
By all accounts he was a sound bloke in real life and genuinely well thought of by most people. RIP Billy Bonds
799 games man! Unthinkable. I assume that his last game was at the end of a season, but maybe 799 is special enough. Fell out in a very big way with Harry Envelope Redknapp I think. Must have been a good bloke!
I just remember seeing a news article about him from American TV (not sure which station) on BBC about him still playing at his 40th birthday, something that was considered very unusual then, that was a year or so before he retired.
Yep. Some player. My memories of him seem to be him charging around midfield on a muddy pitch with his socks half down, driving his team on, often somehow with a bloodied bandage on his head. No wonder he was a hero there .
Class captain and a real good bloke by all accounts. I've worked with a few West Ham fans and they loved him and Brooking but despised Redknapp. They reckoned that Bonds, Brooking and Redknapp were big mates whilst playing but that Redknapp got the West Ham job after undermining Bonds whilst West Ham were struggling. Apparently neither Bonds or Brooking have spoken to Redknapp since. I've never liked Redknapp. Sly, shifty little twat. He apparently did a similar thing when Bournemouth were first promoted to PL with Howe. He lived down that neck of the woods and was going to the home games and tried to ingratiate himself with their board of directors.
