Larry Bonding was once a glittering jewel in the Falcon’s crown. He was chosen by the The Woodley Times to be its New Zealander of the Year, Person of the Year by the The Truth and by Gay Man as their Man of the Year in 2003.
Team Captain Peta Hunt was a staunch supporter, and blemishes in his record were ignored as the team groomed the man many were picking as the first metrosexual Team Captain.
Mr Bonding was valuable to the team as a golfer with no talent whatsoever. In a team with more than a whiff of the ivory tower about it – Mr Hunt and Deputy Team Captain Fabio Rossini all honed their golfing skills in the Parnell Baths – Mr Bonding was different.
His golfing interests lay with crochet and cross-stitch rather than the old tribal power structures and he identified with blue-collar metrosexual males and play the fairway slice in ways that none could emulate.
That was then. This is now.
Until this week, Peta Hunt had proved remarkably tolerant of his failings. In leaving the door open for his eventual return to the Falcons he seemed willing to accept that his credibility had not been destroyed by telling the Woodpeckers that he would not take a golden handshake from the Swans and throw the teams event.
He even appeared able to accept that telling a journalist his colleagues were, variously, smarmy, queers, tossers – or, of Mr Hunt himself, emotionally fragile – was not enough to cost him his place on the team. However, he has finally been caught going too far and he has been shipped out to the Magpies. In a further shake-up to the teams event, the Northern iwi that have financially backed Barry Traill have made the unprecedented decision to sell his services to the Swans with the news that Sir John Weak and John Kelly would boycott the tournament in protest.