Tearful end of an era
ATING
Clive Woodward's resignation as manager of England's World Cup rugby winners was delightfully cranky and typical of his oddball free spirit. No one who knows him was in the least bit surprised, although the parting swipe that he by far preferred soccer anyway must have popped a few collar-studs at Twickenham. Perhaps zany Woody should have contrived a straight swap with English football's eminent ancient Bobby Robson, who was summarily sacked on the same day by Newcastle United after fewer than a handful of games of the new season.
Compared with Woodward's wacky adieu, 71-year-old Robson's tearful exit was demeaning. End of an era or, as a Grauniad misprint on a piece of mine once nicely and more conclusively came up with: 'End of an End.' Robson is the very last of a rare vintage of English managers, a line which winds back to the mists of Woodbine smoke, demob suits, flat caps and a maxi
mum wage of £12 a week — a noble, nononsense homegrown heritage through Stan Cullis, Bill Nicholson, Alf Ramsey, Joe Mercer, Don Revie, Bob Paisley and Brian Clough. The lore, legend and innate love of the game seeped through their every pore. Bob closes the gold-leafed book on that regal line of eight which had no remote time for bigtime soccer's attendant guff and glitter. For each of them, in their different way, discipline was the mantra. I last enjoyed a lunch with Robson on the eve of his 70th birthday in Chesterle-Street. Wherever and whoever he had coached and managed (Fulham, Ipswich, England, Eindhoven, Porto, Barcelona), he said his 'two overriding watchwords on and off the field have been "order" and "probity". I may be found wanting in other areas but those are my two transcendent tenets.' No wonder his game had no more time for him.
On the ten-mile trip from Durham railway station that winter day, on a whim the taxi driver — 'Off to see our Bobby are you? Tell him a good friend of his brother drove you up' — switched off the meter at the left fork to Langley Park: 'It's only a couple of miles. I'll show you where Bobby used to live.' And so he does. A tiny one-up NCB cottage damply clamped to the middle of a squashed, desolate, doll's-house terrace. It is the miner's home that pale urchin Robert William had left at 15 to try his luck in football at Fulham for £7 a week and an apprenticeship, if he didn't make it, with an electrical firm in Victoria, The boy helped to wire the new Festival Hail, But, of course, he did make it at football, and for his first match for England (Hopkinson; Howe, Byrne; Clayton, Wright. Edwards; Douglas, Robson, Taylor, Haynes, Finney) against France at Wembley in 1957, his dear disciplinarian dad, Philip — 'he only missed one single shift in 51 years underground' — had worked a double shift the previous weekend so he could drive all the way down the Al in his battered Austin A40 to see his son score twice and so set off on almost five decades of influence, high regard and honour.
'I've been lucky, haven't I? I played with Matthews and Finney, Haynes and Greaves. I managed Lineker and Robson, Shaton and Gascoigne, Romario and Ronal& ... and Shearer.' And even Chelsea's acclaimed, multi-zillion-pound new manager says he owes it all, everything, to Bobby.
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