Not since Malcolm Waldron came through the ranks in the late 1970s have Southampton nurtured a centre-back who enjoyed a sustained run in the first-team. A few have carved out successful careers elsewhere, however – like Matthew Bound.

Matthew was very much in the Chris Nicholl mold.

His handful of appearances for the Saints spanned three seasons, under three managers – Nicholl, Branfoot and Ball – and the formation of the Premiership. Further progress in the first team was blocked by the likes of Neil Ruddock, Richard Hall, Kevin Moore, and Ken Monkou. After a loan spell at Hull, Matthew featured one last time for Southampton – in the 5-4 win at Norwich that provided the platform for the 1994 version of the “Great Escape”. Whereupon, he signed for Stockport County’s Danny Bergara. Dave Jones, who soon inherited Matthew from Bergara, has speculated that Southampton had released this

“big, strong, powerful” center-back because he “lacks a bit of pace” – even though “he never seems to get caught out.”

In 1996-97, Matthew was sidelined, after five matches, with a broken foot, followed by a double hernia-operation. This meant that he missed out on County’s promotion-run to the second tier and the rest of a League Cup-run that included a quarter-final win at The Dell. When Southampton duly recruited Jones, Matthew soon headed for fourth-tier Swansea. As implied in Dave Jones’s evaluation, he compensated for any shortfall in pace by his sound positional sense in a back four that had “a strong work ethic on the pitch,” Matthew has explained, and which “socialized just as hard, off it.”

And he did get to enjoy a promotion run, this time, hardly missing a game as Swansea headed their division in 2000-01. Then, when the financial wheels fell off at the Vetch, he made 100 more League appearances for Oxford United, back in the fourth tier. In preparation for life beyond football, Matthew combined college studies at Bournemouth with two spells at Weymouth, either side of a brief flirtation with Eastleigh. Retiring to Swansea, he was, in 2019, Managing Director of Team Tours, a business organizing national and international tours for all age-groups, across a range of sports and also running a self-catering holiday-cottage business.