A fond farewell to the main man

Sep 22 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal

As big football names past and present assembled to give thanks for the life of Sir Bobby Robson, David Whetstone was eavesdropping in the crowd - and trying to distinguish his Butchers from his Brookings.

THE predominant colour was grey. It was in the leaden sky, the ancient stonework of Durham Cathedral and the massed suits – formal attire of the British male – assembled to celebrate the life of Sir Bobby Robson, footballing legend.

But despite all this, and the fact that it rained on Sir Bobby’s parade, this service of thanksgiving was anything but a sombre affair.

“It’s great to see so many old friends and colleagues turn up to pay their respects to a great man,” said Terry Butcher, who once famously played for Sir Bobby’s England team with his head swathed in bloody bandages.

“He brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. There’s only one person missing today and that’s the main man.”

If funereal gear was the order of the day, Terry ‘El Tel’ Venables, another former England manager, caught the mood, welcoming the TV cameras with a smile. “It’s all about celebrating his life, isn’t it? The man was immense right through his career. He was so enthusiastic it was infectious to everybody.”

Yesterday’s celebration, which packed the cathedral, was a gathering of football’s protagonists past and present. You would say the great and the good but such are the sport’s pantomime qualities, played out interminably on television and in print, that it seems more apt to say heroes and villains.

Evidently Sir Bobby united them all. Here was Everton manager David Moyes, most often seen on TV with veins bulging, loquacious and mellow. And here were Sir John Hall and Freddie Shepherd spilling out of the same red mini-bus.

For the press, the fun was to spot the sporting celebrities as they disembarked from the cabs and mini-buses delivering them at the cathedral entrance from some unknown collection point.

For someone slightly off his normal beat as arts and entertainment editor, this was also a challenge. Someone you know from ageing TV clips, in tight shorts and long sideburns, does not necessarily look the same 20 or 30 years after the final whistle of the final game. First of the famous into the cathedral, sheltering under an umbrella, was Gary Lineker, who would later pay tribute to Sir Bobby during the service. At least, it looked like him from behind.