52 June 1986 Marxism Today
Bobby Robson Stephen Wagg
he media frenzy of the apprentices. He signed instead for World Cup football Fulham, making his debut the competition will soon be following year. He played wing half— upon us once again. Hordes now called 'midfield' - and was one T of several class players at Fulham at of newspaper reporters and tv anchorpersonswill descend on the time, notably Johnny Haynes, a Mexico City and begin the patriotic future England captain. work of shoving microphones under In 1956 he moved into the First the chins of their respective national Division when he signed for West team managers, asking how did Bromwich Albion, and within 12 training go today, or what months he had gained the first of his explanation can they offer for 20 England caps, scoring twice in the yesterday's 1-1 draw against lowly 4-0 defeat of France. Playing for Third World opposition. The England brought him into contact found the Conservatives anti-semitic. unsurprisingly, for 'the spirit of the attention of the Fleet Street/Wapping with Walter Winterbottom, manager He was wealthy and interventionist in Falklands' to be expressed by contingent will focus on the not of the England team and director of the manner of many men who have Wembley crowds watching England. wholly remarkable figure of the coaching for the football Association. taken over football clubs in the last 20 His teams have been neither very England team manager, Bobby Winterbottom was an inspiration to years. good nor very bad at eliciting such a Robson. hundreds of young professional He and Robson clashed bitterly over response. They merely reflect the Robson's life could have been footballers in the 1950s. Scorned on playing matters and Robson was state of the national game here and scripted by the prickly nouveaux Fleet Street as a boffin peddling dismissed after nine months. The day elsewhere: functional, forgettable riches of today's Conservative party irrelevant 'theories', Winterbottom he was fired he stood in the middle of and perpetually in search of new central office. He was born in 1933 in gave many League players a sense of the Fulham pitch and wept. 'I thought marketing strategies. the small mining village of Sacriston, their own expertise and a conviction only layabouts and social misfits With the press, he is readier to talk County Durham, the fourth of five thatfootball teams could be coached claimed dole money1, he remembers. than his predecessors Ramsey, Revie boys born to Lillian Robson and her and managed to greater effect. 'There was no disgrace, I soon or Greenwood were, but he collier husband Philip. His childhood As his disciples began to get jobs as learned, in being unemployed'. When acknowledges that he's not a was like thousands of working class coaches and managers at league told years later of Miller's suicide, 'front-of-house-man' and would childhoods of the era: hard, happy, clubs, this conviction fed a new Robson reflected bitterly: 'Shows how rather not compete for column inches disciplined - father reaching for his managerialism. Robson, like aII his he stood up to pressure, doesn't it?' with the more garrulous managers. belt when necessary-and generation, scoffs at the men who Robson soon landed another job, He is also wounded, just as other circumscribed by a stern Methodist managed football clubs up to the this time at Ipswich. His account of his England managers have been, by faith. 1950s. The general view is you never stewardship there is an extraordinary press treatment of the 'pathetic Robson is awed by his parents' saw managers then: they just poked ideological mixture. He found, he England' or 'X must go' variety: he stoicism. His mother, the solitary their heads round the dressing room says, a decrepit club dominated by once threatened, for instance, to 'put female in a household of seven, door before a match and told you not backsliders, two of whom he took on one on' Brian Glanville of the Sunday longed for a daughter, but hid her to hang about in the bath afterwards. in a John Wayne-style fist fight. He Times. disappointment. His father, ever Robson resolved, like most of his then nurtured a young team, culled But in the world of the football mindful that if you didn't turn up for contemporaries, to forge a closer largely from the club's apprenticeship manager, with its absurdly work you didn't get paid, missed only tactical and personal relationship scheme, which performed well in the individualistic ethos, it is not easy to a single shift in 51 years down the with any players he might manage First Division and won the FA Cup in convince oneself that anyone in the local pit. He is also proud that all his and to demand autonomy in team 1978. Augmented bythetalented job would get the same ritual abuse brothers, clearly imbued with a matters. Dutchmen Muhren and Thijssen it (athough they undoubtedly would). remarkable sense of striving, have Robson finished his playing days at won the UEFA Cup in 1981.Although Football managers have to believe in 'got on': aside from the England Fulham and got a job managing he stands as strongly for themselves and to find some way of football manager, the family now Vancouver football club in Canada. professionalism as any other modern coping with ludicrous public boasts a chief engineer at the NCB.a This appointment was aborted within manager, Robson always valued the expectations. Robson, an earnest and prosperous newsagent, a months by the club's bankruptcy and fact that the Ipswich board was vulnerable man, consoles himself with supermarket owner and senior Robson returned to England to dominated by John and Patrick thoughts of his luxury East Anglian draughtsman with an oil company. manage Fulham. The comedian Cobbold, Old Etonians for whom home, the public school education he Robson's own route out was of Tommy Trinder had lately been winning was not the only thing in procured for each of his three sons course, professional football. At 17, in replaced as chairperson by property football. The England post is one of and, above all, like so many football 1950, he rejected an offer from his tycoon Sir Eric Miller. Miller, a Jew of the few that would have tempted people, with the realisation that he is local club, Newcastle United, on the humble origins and wheeler-dealer in Robson from Ipswich. 'absolutely besotted by football' and grounds that their big spending the modern mould, was close to the When he became England manager couldn't imagine earning a living any policy limited opportunities for young prime minister Harold Wilson, having in 1982, Robson called, perhaps other way.