Stan could do with a lesson in bouncebackability

TV View:After the week Bobby Robson had we wondered if he'd be tempted to cut his ties with football for once and for all. Those 90 (plus) minutes in San Marino, followed by the marginally more harrowing 75 on Liveline, would break the hardiest of folk.

Would he decide that 57 years in professional football was more than plenty? Well, when we switched on Match of the Day on Saturday night there he was, in the crowd at St James' Park for the Newcastle v Liverpool game, looking cheerful, despite the rain and sub-zero temperatures, and resplendent in what appeared to be a fedora-type hat thing, a bit like the one Indiana Jones wears.

So, Bobby had emerged from the Temple of Doom, his insatiable, unquenchable appetite for the game intact.

Ian Dowie called it "bouncebackability". Bobby, evidently, has it in spades.

A few hours later, 2.30 in the morning, to be precise, we switched on BBC News 24, usually a sure-fire cure for insomnia.

And there he was. Again. Yep. Bobby! Now, it's probably a reasonable guess that the interview with him was recorded, but knowing Bobby it wouldn't be all that surprising if he made himself available to the channel at 2.30 in the morning to talk for half an hour about all things football.

But no, the interview was done before the San Marino game.

"Your job title with Ireland is international football consultant - what do you do?" he was asked.

You'd imagine Bobby would have tired of this question by now. But no, off he went like he'd never been asked it before.

"Good question," he said, which left us a little alarmed at first, like he was asking his interviewer to answer the question for him.

"I work," he said, before the interviewer had a chance to step in.

"Ste - Steve or Stan, I never know what to call him - when I call him Stan people call him Steve, when I call him Steve people call him Stan," he said.

"Is he the coach?" asked the BBC man.

"He's the manager," said Bobby, jabbing his finger in the air, just to stress the point.

"He's boss, he's number one. And I made sure that he knows that, I said, 'Stan, you are the boss'.

"I'm there at his beck and call, whatever he wants from me I'm there. I've been around a long time, I know how to play effective football, I think I know how to get the best out of players, I think I know how to build a team."

Now, there's a world-class managerial CV.

Asked about Ireland's recent struggles, he pointed to the performance against the Czech Republic as evidence that the potential is there, and then he took the interviewer through the game as though it had been played that afternoon.

"I was watching that game at home. I was so ecstatic when we scored, when Duff did the magic on the right and Kevin Kilbane came in on the back post and scored. I was semi-paralysed at the time but I jumped out of the chair. My wife said to me, 'I thought you weren't very well.' I said 'WE'VE JUST SCORED!'

"It was a great goal. We did very well that day. But we should have won."

You couldn't help concluding that if Ireland had played against San Marino with two per cent of the passion Bobby feels for the game they'd have posted a cricket score and the opposition would have been out for a collective duck.

But even on the Late Late Show there was no getting away from Wednesday's gloom. Peter Collett is a social psychologist who used to be employed by Channel 4's Big Brother to analyse the behaviour of the participants.

He seemed to conclude that Staunton's career is as endangered now as that of Jade Goody, but he stopped short of recommending that Jade succeed Staunton. She has, after all, no managerial experience.

"He's got a real hangdog look, his facial muscles go kind of into collapse he's so distressed," said Collett after analysing Staunton's body language in his post-match press conference last Wednesday.

"Watch how he positions his hands, not only defensively but also as a mode of self-comfort. There's also a bit of fidgeting in the seat. It's a way of trying to get out of the situation, he's wriggling his bottom."

"Watch his shoulders - when people feel threatened they automatically raise up their shoulders. Why? Because that defends their neck. It's done by people who know that they are about to get their head chopped off."

Unless, of course, Bobby gives him a lesson in bouncebackability.