Bernard Halford - a mystery!

The club has been run by muppets for years. Some elements of the incompetence still remains. The stadium is still clearly run by dullards. Small things such as broken turnstiles that don't get fixed and bars (run by idiots anyway) that are not opened on small attendance games such as carling cup early rounds. The ticket office, although it is now improving, was legendary for it's cock ups.

I'm not saying that Bernard Halford had any part in the shite running of the club, but he was club secetary. Which I believe is or was quite a prominent position in the day to day running of a football club. And, I certainly would never accuse him of being bent, that I would lay firmly at Swales' door.
 
I met Bernard yesterday at the Maine Road/Stan Gibson memorial... it was clear that he lives and breathes Man City,he has an encyclopeadic knowledge of the club it's history and future, an intelligent affable man, I was impressed.
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
I have no personal malice to Bernard....
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Judging from the rest of your posts and I am only on page 2 I find this hard to believe, you have been very vocal in reply to other posters in your indignation of him being on the coach.

Is it really something to get so worked up about ?

Maybe the rides on the coach are the football equivalent of the gold watch at retirement.
 
Wow that this thread has been brought back to life after two and a half years!
Interestingly (for me) Bernard attended the launch of my book ''Teenage Kicks'' last November (which is more than I did as I was not able to attend now living in the US).
He attended as not only was he the secretary for City at the time, but he is now also an FA Councillor and he was there to present Andy Thackeray with his FA Youth Cup winners tankard (he had been sent off in the 1st Leg and was prevented from receiving a tankard and the club lost an appeal to present him one posthumously - but 27 years on I appealed to the FA and he was awarded one.)

On the night of the launch Bernard admitted that the reported attendance of the 2nd leg final game against United was 28,000 and not the reported 18,000. Most of the players in the book rightly question the attendance (never mind the fans!)
So he clearly was aware of the goings on behind the scenes..... again, that is not to say he benefited from it (directly) but he was privy to what was going on at the time.......
 
Not a mystery if you think of City as a community club that respects it's history and those that helped make it.

When people say he is considered "Mr Manchester City" throughout football, you have to remember that City operates M-F as a business, not just when everything magically comes together on Saturdays. For DECADES, one of the men who was instrumental in that was Bernard Halford. When people from OTHER CLUBS ever wanted anything from City, Bernard was the man who took care of it.

City is, and always SHOULD BE, more than the "product" that turns out for 90 minutes every week or few days. We get in the faces of people who say City don't have any 'istree, yet mock one of the people that will ALWAYS be an integral part of that 'istree?

We are a funny old lot. Short memories and too little patience. Must be the modern world of computer games and two second attention spans.

When Bernard Halford dies, people will come out of the woodwork to tell us all what a "football man" he was, and what a gentleman he was. He bleeds blue and is one of the very few threads we have left that run from the old timer glory years to today.
 
ChicagoBlue said:
Not a mystery if you think of City as a community club that respects it's history and those that helped make it.

When people say he is considered "Mr Manchester City" throughout football, you have to remember that City operates M-F as a business, not just when everything magically comes together on Saturdays. For DECADES, one of the men who was instrumental in that was Bernard Halford. When people from OTHER CLUBS ever wanted anything from City, Bernard was the man who took care of it.

City is, and always SHOULD BE, more than the "product" that turns out for 90 minutes every week or few days. We get in the faces of people who say City don't have any 'istree, yet mock one of the people that will ALWAYS be an integral part of that 'istree?

We are a funny old lot. Short memories and too little patience. Must be the modern world of computer games and two second attention spans.

When Bernard Halford dies, people will come out of the woodwork to tell us all what a "football man" he was, and what a gentleman he was. He bleeds blue and is one of the very few threads we have left that run from the old timer glory years to today.
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100% correct! much of this post is fuelled by ignorance. Bernard is a top man who has worked tirelessly for the club for generations. He deserves all the accolades which come his way.
 
Bernard Halford is a very nice man, if you ever get the chance to speak to him I am sure you will agree. loves and lives for Manchester City.

Yes, I was also in that queue (Gillingham ) when he messed up but he was only trying to help.
Let him enjoy his role.
 
M18CTID said:
I honestly don't see why people are getting on the OP's back over this - he asked a perfectly legitimate question without being hugely critical of BH himself.

I can see it from both sides of the fence myself - on the one hand, to many people of a certain age, BH was the very public face of Swales' largely disastrous 20-year spell as chairman. If I'm not mistaken, on occasion he was critical of City fans as a collective and plenty of people won't be in a hurry to forget that.

On the other hand, however, he has survived many changes of ownership. Most crucially for me was him being kept on by Francis Lee - I was convinced that he would be one of the first to be flirted off as like many others I saw him as a mate of Swales. The fact that he was kept on changed my opinion to one of a man that was loyal to the club he worked for regardless of who his boss was, as opposed to being loyal to one particular person (Swales). The fact that he's gone on to survive further changes of ownership tells me that he must be good at his job. It could well be that those occasions that he criticised the fans were perhaps not his own views and in all probablility he was just taking the hit for Swales.
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this in a nutshell

plus one other point: When BH was offered the position whether he deserved it or not no one actually believes he should have refused it do they? So the OP should be having a go at who ever invented this position for him and not BH
 
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