For quite some time Jackie had made me his young companion as he travelled about the North East, making presentations, opening events. He introduced me as ‘Our Bobby’, saying, ‘I’ve brought a coming football star, one of the England Schoolboys’ – and when such a job was done he would hand me four shillings. I protested, saying I was just pleased to tag along with him, but he insisted, ‘You’ve come with me, you’re part of the show, take it.’
When he died, in 1988, I saw clearly the impact he had had on the community in which he had played out his life. After the funeral service in Newcastle Cathedral, I was walking through the crowds who thronged the street when Bob Stokoe, the old Newcastle centre half who managed Sunderland to their shock 1973 FA Cup victory over Leeds United, stopped his car and told me to get in. I was very upset. Jackie’s death took away a pillar of my life, someone in whom I had grown to feel the deepest pride and affection. He had taken me everywhere. I had even played cricket with him. He had told me about the game, not just the detail of it but how you should approach it in your spirit as well as your talent.
When United had me playing on the wing for a while, he had known I was restive and he once said, ‘When are you going to play centre forward?’ I said, ‘Well, it really isn’t up to me.’ He replied, ‘Well, Bobby, let me tell you something – you are Manchester United, and you can tell them what you want to do.’ He wasn’t being mischievous. He was trying to make me feel good and better aware of what I had to offer. Now, on that drive after the funeral, Bob confirmed to me that whenever Jackie had something to say to a team-mate it was always encouraging, always a lift of the spirit.
As I drove along with Bob I noticed how solemn were the people lining the route between the cathedral and the crematorium in the outskirts. They were showing respect, of course, but I felt there should also be celebration of a great life – I wanted to hear applause. I said, ‘If you do something good in life it is surely a matter for cheers, not just sadness.’ A few years later I was delighted to see that other people were beginning to feel this way as bursts of applause accompanied the funeral cortege of that other great hero of mine, Stanley Matthews.
When Jackie had come to our house on behalf of Newcastle he could not have been more honest, but after saying how poor Newcastle’s coaching and youth planning was, he also had to tell me the club had promised to get me a job on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. When, at my mother’s insistence, I had considered alternative careers, becoming a sports reporter was always high on my list. The job had one supreme advantage. You got a free pass to see the games. It was also something you could do if the worst happened to you, if you broke a leg and had to make a career outside the game. That was always the point being hammered home to me, and not just by my mother. It made me impatient, possibly because if you are ever going to be optimistic, and immortal, it is probably around the age of fifteen. But a boy had to listen to his elders, even if, in the privacy of his own thoughts, he rejected what they said. You could always make a compromise satisfactory to yourself. One of mine came when I asked a relative, a greengrocer, how much it had cost him to set up in business. His answer was very reassuring. He told me it was around £2,000. That made everything quite straightforward. If I played for twenty years I could easily put away a hundred a year, and then I could face the second half of my life selling apples and oranges. The idea did not fill with me with joy but, as everyone said, you had to plan for the future.
First, though, you had to take the best of what life had to offer and that’s what I believed I was doing when my mother dressed me in my sea-green mac and put me on the train to Manchester. I was leaving my brothers and my uncles, and my friends and all that was familiar, including a girlfriend at Bedlington Grammar, who was named, prophetically, Norma – Norma Outhwaite. She was a nice girl, but I was not a victim of young love. We had been good friends but I was a football man and I had to go about my business. At that time of my youth no girl could compete with football. It was both my greatest love and my obsession.
4
A NEW LIFE AND A NEW WATCH
WHEN THE TRAIN came to a halt in Exchange Station, and I looked out through the billowing steam and saw the black buildings and the busy platform, I said to myself, ‘Well, Bobby, this is your adventure starting and you don’t know what’s going to happen.’
For so long I had assumed that my talent for football would
