Beardo: Sir Bobby was loved all over the world
Jul 31 2010 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal
ON the day Newcastle United pays tribute to Sir Bobby Robson, Peter Beardsley tells Stuart Rayner about one of football’s good guys.
IT was the biggest night of his professional career. His team were a penalty shoot-out away from their first World Cup final on foreign soil, vindicating a manager told before the tournament his contract would not be renewed.
Yet that famous night in Turin, Bobby Robson’s mind was elsewhere. Rather than thinking of proving a point, or carving out his place in history, he was thinking of others. It was an attitude he kept throughout a life which ended a year ago today.
“The semi-final for me was really special,” recalls Peter Beardsley, a penalty-taker when England played West Germany at the 1990 World Cup. “When you came to take a penalty he was brilliant, everything about him. He was walking around and talking to Gary (Lineker) and I. He told us, ‘There’s 55m back home watching, don’t let them down’.
“It went straight over my head but that’s the way he was. I never thought about the people back home, I was always thinking about the moment. But he was really concerned about the people back home and wanted to do it for them.” It was Robson – later Sir Bobby – all over. He spent his last days working to help others fight cancer, a disease he beat four times before it finally got the better of him. The anniversary of his death will be marked today with a football match between “his” club and one of the many where he enjoyed success, PSV Eindhoven, at the St James’ Park ground where he spent much time in the stands at the beginning and end of his life, but only five years as an employee.
The outpouring of grief which extended way beyond this region’s football supporters last August demonstrated the effect Sir Bobby’s caring and charisma had. Reserve team coach Beardsley, one of the few remaining football staff members at Newcastle United to have worked with Robson, regrets his old boss never saw it.
“He was a very special person in my life,” says Beardsley, who earned the first 45 of his 59 England caps under Robson. “I had two World Cups playing for him (the other in 1986) and I was a coach under him here at Newcastle at the academy.
“The saddest thing of all for me is I don’t think he realised how popular he was. When you look at the way people have been since he died it’s incredible, the money raised for his charity and the support Lady Elsie (Robson’s widow) has had. It’s hard to measure but he was a special, special person.”
