FOR more than 40 years, whatever football clubs he has been involved with, Harry Redknapp has been connected with the Bournemouth area.

And while he has rarely been far from the back pages of the national papers, local people know him for more than football.

On his home turf, he is also respected for his charity work and his personal appearances – and his home on the Sandbanks peninsula is on every sightseer’s itinerary.

See all the pictures of Harry Redknapp over the years in a gallery 

Last week, after quitting as manager of Queens Park Rangers, the 67-year-old allowed the Daily Echo into his Sandbanks home.

He said he was already missing football and would probably go to watch AFC Bournemouth, the club he managed for nine years.

“I’ve got a low boredom threshold. I can’t be sat here watching television and I don’t really read a lot of books,” he said.

Redknapp’s name was first linked to what was then Boscombe football club in 1970, when manager John Bond was looking to spend a record £32,000 signing him from West Ham.

At the London club, he had notched up more than 150 first appearances – including games alongside England heroes Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters.

He eventually came to Bournemouth in 1972 and spent four years with the Cherries before quitting to go to America, where he played and coached with the Seattle Sounders.

He was back in Bournemouth as assistant manager to David Webb in 1981 and was appointed to the top job in 1983.

In January 1984, Redknapp’s Cherries knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup in a thrilling 2-0 victory at Dean Court.

And in 1987, they earned promotion after coming top of the old Division Three.

Redknapp’s candid approach to interviews always made for good copy. In November 1986, he had shared his feelings about a minority of Cherries fans who doubted whether the club really wanted promotion.

“The next one who says it to me will get a right mouthful. How anyone can be so stupid to even think like that is unbelievable,” he said.

“It’s as though I am supposed to walk into the dressing room and tell 15 players to go crooked. What a load of cobblers.”

In October 1988, when the club had its work cut out to stay in Division Two, he said: “This club has seen more, achieved more and won more since 1983 than it had in 40 years before that.

“The Associate Members Cup in 1984 was the first prize it had ever won in 70 years.”

In May 1989, he called Dean Court an “embarrassment” as plans were revealed to replace the ground with an all-purpose stadium near Hurn Airport.

“The place has just about had it,” he said.

“Even though people like coming here, you only have to look at the facilities to realise they deserve much better.”

Redknapp’s willingness to support a good cause or a local business kept him in the news pages of the Echo almost as often as he was in sport stories.

He smashed a giant bottle of coins at the Salisbury Bars in Bournemouth, for the NSPCC. He agreed to let a group of women dressed in St Trinian’s style-costumes fire penalties past him at an It’s a Knockout Event. And he served up the chips at Oakmead School, West Howe, as part of an event for the cancer charity Trading Places. Redknapp became the Cherries’ longest-serving manager in January 1990, but the year was to bring tragedy.

In Italy that July, Redknapp was on a minibus when it was involved in a crash with a car. Former Cherries managing director Brian Tiler died, along with the three young Italians in the car.

They were returning from watching Ireland’s defeat against Italy when the accident happened on the road between Rome and Naples. Rekdnapp was dragged unconscious from the scene by York City chairman Michael Sinclair.

Redknapp suffered serious injuries and was heavily sedated in hospital. When he was well enough to be moved to the Lansdowne Private Hospital in Bournemouth, he managed a joke: “The doctors tell me I can’t head a ball for another two years. But that’s no problem – I never could head it anyway.”

He made an emotional return to Dean Court that September. “I never realised fully how much this club means to me,” he said.

Redknapp left Dean Court in 1992, saying he wanted “a new challenge”. At his home that day, the Echo reported how his wife Sandra seemed a “pocket of calm” as Harry dealt with a flood of phone calls, many from people urging him to stay.

The couple had been living in Whitfield Park, Ashley Heath, for six years by then and had been in the area for 19 years, the Echo noted. Sons Jamie and Mark had gone to Twynham School.

Everyone remarked on how close the family were and how warmly Redknapp always spoke of his wife.

He told the paper about the first time they met. “She wrote her telephone number in lipstick on a bit of paper in my car. We get on so well it’s silly,” he said.

After the Cherries, Redknapp managed a succession of top clubs: West Ham, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and QPR. But he continued to live in Dorset, becoming the most famous resident of Sandbanks and supporting a long list of charities, including the Julia’s House and Lewis-Manning hospices.

In 2012, after leaving the manager’s job at Tottenham, he made it clear he was staying at Sandbanks, the place he loved to walk his dog on the beach “I live here,” he told the Echo. “Why would I leave here?”