I never met him but from what I have seen and heard he was a gentleman and a thoroughly nice man. Also he was undoubtedly one of the best English managers of recent times. We need more like him.
He was of a generation where it was possible to watch both teams as my dad did and his dad before him did. You obviously had your favourite but it was ok to cheer your neighbours on because you recognised that they were the same as you. They where the blokes you worked with and drank with, they just followed a different team. It’s such a shame that that healthy but mostly peaceful rivalry was hijacked by idiots and then fanned into outright hatred by certain chairmen and owners in their quest to sell more and more shirts and merchandise. It took all the fun out of the rivalry for me. I think Bobby saw that as well. NUFC was in his blood, there is no doubt about that, but he did have a soft spot for SAFC too. And I think conga dancing around the table in the board room in front of your defeated rival showed a lack of class that would have frankly sickened him. Every now and then I meet an NUFC fan who knows what I'm talking about and misses those days too, but all too often I meet people who only want to scream obscenities and bile, funny thing is they are usually the Sky/Hall/Sheppard generation of fans.
Anyway, Bobby is missed, moan and rant over.