Bobby Robson once slept with the FA Cup under his bed. Of all the fascinating detail of this football man's 50 years in the professional game - a journey from a north-east pit village via Fulham, Vancouver, Ipswich, England, Eindhoven, Barcelona and back to the north-east again; a circle which embraced characters as diverse as Duncan Edwards, Paul Gascoigne, Stanley Matthews, Roger Osborne, Malcolm MacDonald, Ronaldo and Alan Shearer - that he once went to his bed with the most famous trophy of them all under it says more about Robson than the statistics of a vivid career ever will.

He may know all about the pain of the sack and the pleasure of victory, he may have experienced the unprecedented abuse of the tabloids, and he must know more secrets of the game's seamy side than MI5, but Bobby Robson is still turning up for work every day at the age of 67 because Bobby Robson is in love with football.

Only a lover, or a character from a comic, takes the FA Cup to bed.

Robson has often suffered from portrayal as a cartoon figure, but that is an exploitation of his unfettered enthusiasm. On Thursday afternoon, for example, as he thrashed his way passionately through a forest of questions, Robson was on his feet pretending to take free-kicks and throw-ins, moving glasses and bottles of water to illustrate tactics, and describing the warm July night in 1978 when he took the FA Cup to his boudoir.

Six weeks earlier at Wembley, Ipswich Town had overcome Arsenal, and odds of 5 to 2 against, to win their one and only cup. Ipswich and the rest of East Anglia embarked on 12 months of blue ribbon celebration.

Even though Robson had moulded Ipswich into one of the most formidable teams in Europe, stuffed with talents such as Arnold Muhren, Kevin Beattie, John Wark and Frans Thijssen, Ipswich winning the FA Cup was fantasy football 15 years before the phrase caught on.

It was so special the FA allowed Ipswich to keep the cup for a year, and not in a cabinet. A Suffolk sheep once carried it on its back at Portman Road. Despite everything he achieved before or since, Robson is clearly still affected by the imagery of that time. "You can imagine what bringing the FA Cup back to Ipswich meant," he said, smiling at the memory. "So that summer it went to every school, summer fete, hospital, church and boys' club you could think of.

"But it had to be taken back to the police station every night and put under lock and key. Wherever we went we had to have a police officer next to it so no one lifted it. Suffolk was just awash with excitement.

"One summer evening, it was in July, I went to a fete - it was a Wednesday, I remember - but when it was time to go - and remember, I had the cup - I said to myself, `It's bloody late'.

"So I didn't take it to the police station, I took it home. It was in a very nice box, you know, and it was very heavy. I carried it upstairs and slept with it under my bed. I even locked the bedroom door.

"It didn't stop me sleeping, but when I woke up I realised . . . I got it to the police station really early in the morning. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I did. "So you know what the cup means to me. How I would love to get my hands back on it as manager of Newcastle United, the club I followed back in the Fifties when they just about owned it."

Fifty years ago that was true. The Newcastle of Jackie Milburn went to Wembley in 1951, 1952 and 1955 and came back with the cup each time. As a fan, Robson was there twice.

Of greater relevance tomorrow, however, is that Newcastle have gone to the last two finals and come back embarrassed. Although tomorrow is only a semi-final - one Robson does not think Wembley should be staging - Newcastle cannot afford to return red-faced again. Robson's achievement in his 28 weeks since replacing Ruud Gullit is that that eventuality is no longer on the black and white agenda.

Many times in those seven months Alan Shearer has spoken about Robson's galvanising effect. On Thursday he said: "When Bobby came in we had one point from seven games. If he'd been here from the start of the season we'd be a top six side.

"He has that something about him. When you see him working on the training ground you know why he has earned the respect of players like Ronaldo. No one would cross him, but then you wouldn't want to."

Coming from a hard nut like Shearer that last line was particularly revealing. Behind Robson's good uncle demeanour lies a fierce fighter, someone who saw disappointment before triumph as a manager. Having left his playing days behind at Fulham, Robson went to Canada in 1967 to coach the Vancouver Royals. Unfortunately, they hired Ferenc Puskas at the same time.

Robson returned to Fulham as manager, but was sacked after just a few months. Though he had been an England international just a few years earlier, in despair Robson signed on. Today, when he sees reserve team footballers turning up in BMWs: "There is a moment when you think, `The son of a bitch'."

He gave a glimpse of his austerity eight days ago when he announced that Shay Given would not be playing against Bradford City. Asked how Given had taken the news, Robson stared at the reporter as if he had two heads. "I don't know," he replied, as if it were the last thing in the world that would concern him. "I just told him what is happening. It's management."

At the same time as saying that the goal-keeping situation presented him with a dilemma, Robson said with certainty that he knew his semi-final team. The signs are that Given will start tomorrow.

"I know what I want and I know how a player should behave and train," Robson said when outlining his tough love philosophy. "And I'm not shy about being able to tell them. I've had that all my life. "I've been pretty much all over the world now and I think that players actually like discipline. They'll try and create the indiscipline, and then if they get away with it they will moan about it. Footballers, they're a special breed."

So are managers. Robson rattled off the names of Bill Nicholson, Bertie Mee, Harry Catterick, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, and pointed to a common denominator among them often overlooked in the modern game: good chairmen.

"There was never any thought about changing those guys even in a bad year. The demands are much greater now. Within two or three years, if a big club hasn't been successful, they change the manager. They don't think about stability. You just need a bit of patience and understanding, but patience and understanding have disappeared.

"I had the greatest chairman of all at Ipswich, John Cobbold. Whenever we lost, and I was a bit y'know, he used to say: `Bobby, Bobby, if we didn't lose today then other people wouldn't have the pleasure of winning.' I used to look at him and think: `Is he real?' And he was. He would say: `Bobby, the game is bigger than the prize. If there's no game, then there's no prize, so the game comes first.'

"Now, I worked for 14 years for that fella. It was the saddest day of my life when I left him. It was probably the most important day of my life as well, because I went to England. But to leave that fella with that Corinthian attitude . . . He brought me up to love the game of football and that it was a game."

The affection was one reason Robson turned down Manchester United 19 years ago. Yet that mutual approach is the antithesis of the plc club of today. "Absolutely."

Robson's smile vanished briefly then, but it returned with thoughts of Wembley. He never lost there as a player and scored twice on his debut against France in 1957. As England manager he lost only four of 34 games there. "It's the place to be, a cathedral. I'll be sorry to see the old girl go."

Tomorrow he will be back, even if it is only a semi-final. The FA Cup has suffered a lot this season and it needs to feel special again. Asked what winning the cup with Newcastle would mean, a former lover replied: "Not much short of everything."

Sleep well, Bobby Robson.