Free Always Managing: My Autobiography by Harry Redknapp Page A

he came back and had another one, and the phone went again, and it was Tina. Bob assured her he was getting a cab and would be home in forty-five minutes. Well, that was nonsense, too, and there was a third call, by which time she was fuming. Tina said she was going to phone his mum and she would come and collect him. Bob came back to us laughing about it, but the next thing the doors burst open and there was the formidable Mrs Moore, with the raving hump. She marched over, grabbed his arm like that of a naughty schoolboy, and said, ‘Right, Tina’s waiting for you, and you’re coming with me.’ Just as he was getting unsteadily to his feet, she rounded on the rest of us. ‘And one of you has mixed his drinks – because he doesn’t get drunk like this, you know!’ And off Bobby, the World Cup-winning captain of England’s football team, went: dragged out of the boozer by his mum. As the doors of the Globe were closing behind him, all we could hear was, ‘But, Mu-um, I’m 29.’
    They were funny times. It wouldn’t happen – it couldn’t happen – today; but in the sixties, sessions like that were the norm. It was no different at Chelsea or Arsenal, but maybe Ron Greenwood took against Bobby because of it. He was certainly more likely to talk football with Geoff Hurst, who was a good lad, but not part of any drinking team.
    After Ron stepped down, John Lyall succeeded him and I think that was the end of Bobby at West Ham, really. John was a young manager, an unknown, trying to make an impression, and he didn’t want a huge presence like Bobby around overshadowing him. I know Bob left West Ham at the end of his career and went to Fulham – and even played against West Ham in the 1975 FA Cup final – but it would have been the easiest thing in the world to get him back. If John had said to him, ‘Come over, Bob, come over to the training ground, just drop in, let the kids see you about, watch their training, maybe put on a session for them,’ I’m sure he would have done that and the kids would have loved it, too. But John didn’t want him anywhere near the place. I think he felt he might be undermined. Maybe John thought that Bobby would be too big, that the players would start looking to him – and maybe some of the other managers around at that time thought the same, too. They probably thought if they brought Bobby in he would be a threat to them. That didn’t make any sense to me. Bobby wasn’t like that. He didn’t have a bad bone in his body.
    It’s a shame that some people are scared of a big name. How could they not make Bobby Moore welcome at West Ham? It happens, though, doesn’t it? You would have thought that Tony Adams would have a job for life at Arsenal, but Arsène Wengerhas never given him a chance as a coach, has he? Great character, great leader, great captain of Arsenal, wants to get into coaching: you would have thought it was ideal. But no, Tony ended up in Azerbaijan – and Bob ended up at Oxford, with me.
    It was the summer of 1980, not long after I’d seen him get thrown out of Upton Park, that Bobby called me to be his assistant. Not at Oxford United – incredibly Bobby couldn’t land a job in professional league football – but Oxford City. They had an owner called Tony Rosser, who had previously been a director at Oxford United. He had a big fall-out and left the club and now it was his ambition to take Oxford City from the Isthmian League to the Football League, and stick it up his old club in the process. It all seemed very bitter and personal. ‘Give it a year, Harry,’ said Bobby. ‘If we do well, we could get picked up somewhere else.’ As if the great Bobby Moore should be doing auditions in non-league football.
    Getting Bobby in was a big coup for Rosser, and he needed to show he meant business. He was doing the ground up and wanted a coach on site, full-time, even though the players only used to come in to training on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I was paid