Full Diary For Bobby

Six months have passed since we reported on the meet-up in Vancouver of Bobby Gould and Les Wilson some three and a half decades on from when they had last been together.

Various constraints sadly make a trip to Canada impossible for us at present but we did make it down to the West Country this week and learned in a three-hour visit to the Gould residence that life remains hectic.

Far from twiddling his thumbs now he has called time on his radio career with talkSPORT, the former forward remains very much ‘out there.’

He recently met 1990-97 Prime Minister Sir John Major at a function held as part of the historic fifth Test between England and Pakistan at The Oval, where the Goulds’ youngest son, Richard, is Surrey’s chief executive.

This Sunday, he is booked in to appear as replacement for Bob Wilson at a Jimmy Hill tribute supper at Hurstpierpoint near where his former Coventry manager, Jimmy Hill, lived in West Sussex.

From there, Bobby is heading to London to appear on a radio station specialising in interviews and features about 1990s football, having also just done a turn at an event at Bristol Rovers, one of his many old clubs.

His match-day viewing these days includes some scouting assignments for Spennymoor, the National League North club for whom his grandson, Matthew, plays in goal.

Gould Snr spent last Saturday at Hereford – another of his employers from when he linked up there with Mike Bailey in the late 1970s – after agreeing to do some assessment of Spennymoor’s future opponents in the sixth tier of English football.

And we long for the day when we can ask this pub quiz question: Which football family has had three generations playing in goal in League football?

Jonathan Gould, currently part of Tony Pulis’s backroom team at Middlesbrough, had a fine career that included international caps with Scotland and Bobby famously deputised for the injured Gary Pierce in the dying minutes of the promotion-denying defeat Wolves inflicted on Bolton at Burnden Park on the last day of the 1976-77 season.

We expect to hear some time soon about the Goulds’ winter travel plans but our trip to their home in Portishead – which happily coincided with a visit there of the former Bristol City centre-half Gordon Parr – also contained further reference to our main summer sport.

Bobby was proud to tell us that his batting average this summer reached 25 – as we say, he is still a busy man!