Gillingham manager Mark Bonner hopes the man he replaced gets the reception he deserves this weekend.
Stephen Clemence was sacked at the end of last season by the Gills and replaced by Bonner, but the bond between managers is strong.
Clemence – whose table-topping Barrow side visit Priestfield this Saturday – was one of the first on the phone to offer any help he could when Bonner was installed as the new manager at Gillingham.
He said: “I spoke to Robbie Stockdale (Gills’ former assistant), Stephen Clemence and (ex-boss) Neil Harris, all about players here and the existing staff that were here.
“When you don’t know something, you speak to as many people as you can that can give you a picture, or an idea, of how they worked with players, what worked for them, how they found the club in that moment.
“Stephen was one of a number of people that I spoke to, because I think in the end, you draw your own judgments always but at the same time, if you can get a steer or a head start on one or two, that’s helpful, so that certainly was for me.”
Bonner admits he has no idea what reaction there will be to Clemence’s return but hopes it’s positive.
He said: “I have no idea, because my knowledge of Gillingham before being here was very low. I wouldn’t have known anything that was going on.
“I’d like to hope (the reception) is really respectful.
“In any club at any time, the manager and the coaching staff at the time are giving everything they’ve got to try and make it a success, so that deserves complete respect from my point of view every single time, whoever it is, wherever it is.
“I’d expect that would be the outcome but in the end, that isn’t the story. The story is two teams playing against each other.
“We want to win, they do too. That’s really much more interesting to me than anything else.
Bonner recalled a meeting in the summer when both he and Clemence were joined at lunch by Neil Harris – the man in charge at Priestfield before both of them.
Bonner said: “There were manager meetings pre-season, one in the north and one in the south, but I missed the south one because it was at Milton Keynes and we had a game so I had to go up to Stoke for the meeting. I sat and had lunch with Neil and Stephen.
“We sat chatting at the table about life and football and everything else, and only when you’re in that room do you realise the quality of people doing these jobs around the country, it’s so, so vast.
“There’s managers in and out of work there, but the amount of experience in the room is huge and there is the privilege to do the job, when there are thousands of people that want to do it and millions of people that think they can.
“It’s an unbelievable privilege to do, and very few actually know what it’s like, so when you get to spend time with those people on courses or anything that you can actually have proper conversations, it’s quite an open door and it’s quite a relaxed environment when you get to spend time together.
“It’s like the post-match beer, that’s dying as a tradition at the top level, but remains at ours, because that’s a good bit of time to just chat about life and football and with someone that actually understands it.”
