Albion's publications editor, Dave Bowler, pens a personal tribute to former Albion player and England manager Sir Bobby Robson, who passed away this morning aged 76.

THE passing of Sir Bobby Robson on the eve of a new season is at once a personal tragedy for his family and friends, a perhaps merciful release from the foul ravages of cancer, a heartbreaking loss to a game crying out for the wisdom of its elders, and a timely reminder that football is a game that exists in hearts and souls, not in chequebooks and night clubs.

Few, if any, footballing personalities have been so admired, respected, revered, and yes, loved, genuinely loved, by the footballing populace as Sir Bobby.

We saw that just a couple of years ago when he received the BBC's Lifetime Achievement Award during the 'Sports Personality of the Year' show.

The standing ovation threatened to last all night long and Sir Bobby was visibly moved by the warmth of the tribute.

He could not have deserved the ovation, nor the award itself, more.

Whether you agreed with his views or not, be it back in the days when he was England manager, or more recently as a newspaper and occasional TV or radio pundit, you couldn't help but have the greatest affection for the man.

For as Sir Alex Ferguson said as he presented him with that BBC award: "There are few, if any, people who have such an unquenchable and contagious enthusiasm for the game of football, few who could talk about it all day long with such passion, such optimism, such love.

"He lives and breathes the game and in doing so, he has become one of its immense characters, the kind who feed the game itself, give it its lifeblood."

As football men go, Sir Bobby Robson is up there with the greatest of all, Saint Bill Shankly and Sir Matt Busby. There are no higher compliments, as Robson himself would recognise.

The bulk of Robson's renown was won in international football and, ultimately, it was his career as England manager that people best remember him.

And why not?

It was a career that saw him take the nation to within a penalty kick of the World Cup Final, far and away our greatest achievement since Geoff Hurst lashed that fourth goal into the roof of the Wembley net in 1966.

But Robson could play.

Twenty England caps in an era where the national side played perhaps half the games it does today is a lasting legacy to the quality of his football as an inside forward and then as a right-half, dropping back deeper in the side to a position where his vision and his passing could do yet more damage.

Robson came to The Hawthorns in March 1956 for the considerable sum of £25,000, leaving Fulham for the Black Country, having learned his craft at Craven Cottage by playing alongside another England legend, Johnny Haynes.

He didn't come into a bad Albion team either, initially playing up front alongside Ronnie Allen and Derek Kevan before manager Vic Buckingham recognised that Robson's impeccable reading of the game would be better suited to a deeper lying role where the attacking play was laid out in front of him and he could pull the strings in the same style as the great Ray Barlow.

He also came across another up-and-coming Albion player who was to have a big part in his career once he had hung up his boots, right-back Don Howe.

A first England cap came his way in November 1957, a friendly against the French, if such a thing exists.

Robson played a full part in England's 4-0 win, scoring twice and placing himself at the forefront of the minds of the national selectors, crucial with a World Cup in Sweden in the offing the following summer.

Playing at inside-right, he was replaced for the next three games by Bobby Charlton, still somewhat fragile after the horrors of the Munich air crash.

But by the time England manager Walter Winterbottom was formulating the team for the World Cup in tandem with the selection committee, Robson had played himself back into everyone's thoughts.

He recaptured the number eight shirt for a friendly in Moscow, impressed in a 1-1 draw and played in all three of the group games in Sweden, the opener being a 2-2 draw against the USSR, a game not without controversy.

Robson had a goal ruled out and said: "The referee, Zsolt, was a Hungarian and that was at the time when they were being suppressed, threatened by the Russians, so there was controversy about his appointment.

"Whether that had anything to do with him disallowing a perfectly good goal, I don't know!"

England also drew 0-0 with Brazil, then 2-2 with Austria, leading to a play-off which Robson sat out as the USSR sent England out of the tournament.

It took Robson two years to get back in the England picture, by which time he was playing as a half-back, in the midfield.

He went on a summer tour and played in games against Spain and Hungary which England lost comfortably, but clearly Robson had make his mark and he became a regular fixture in a side that also included players such as Jimmy Armfield, Bobby Charlton, his former Fulham colleague Johnny Haynes and England's greatest ever goalscorer, Jimmy Greaves.

Over the next two-year period, Robson was fortunate enough to play in some incredible games for England, not least the famous 9-3 win over Scotland at Wembley in April 1961.

Bobby opened the scoring, Greaves helped himself to a hat-trick, Bobby Smith and Haynes weighing in with two each and Bryan Douglas completing the rout.

A second World Cup beckoned as Robson was in the party that headed out to prepare for the 1962 competition in Chile.

England prepared by playing a friendly in Peru, as Robson recalls: "Bobby Moore went as cover for me.

"Walter Winterbottom rested me for that game, gave Bobby a run out to save me for the World Cup."We had a practice game and I fractured my ankle, got a crack in it, which was a three-week job, and Bobby Moore played instead of me.

"And that was Bobby in forever, 108 caps!

"We played Brazil in a knockout game and I was fit for that but not match fit, so Bobby stayed in. I was despondent about that, so upset, because I felt I'd been playing well."

That was Robson's England career finished, his final game turning out to be the May 9, 1962 game against the Swiss at Wembley.

He'd finished with Albion too, for on his return to England, he left The Hawthorns to return to Fulham for £20,000, returning to London where, with the maximum wage ceiling's abolition in August 1961, Johnny Haynes had become the first £100 a week footballer.

Robson's enthusiasm for the game found its natural outlet in coaching and management after he finished playing and, of course, he is second only to Alf Ramsey in terms of success with the national side.

Interviewing him several years ago for a book on the history of the England side, Robson said this to me about playing for your country:

"I was lucky enough to play with people like Tom Finney, Duncan Edwards, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves - great, great footballers who loved playing for England.

"Then over the years, the players I selected, guys like Gary Lineker, Peter Beardsley, Bryan Robson, Paul Gascoigne, Ray Wilkins, Gary Mabbutt, they all felt the same way we did.

"There is a great passion about the English players and in all the eight years I was in charge, I never met a player who wasn't just absolutely captivated and thrilled by their selection.

"It isn't easy to play for England in that spotlight, but they all want that chance.

"Some are nervous about it, and it takes some four or five internationals before they feel comfortable, before they can put on that white shirt, stand on the pitch at Wembley, and be themselves.

"Some, like Gascoigne, just take to it.

"He played his first game as though he'd played 50 times, but others, you know they've got the talent and the character, but the occasion gets to them.

"But I never found a player who wasn't captivated by it, and that's as it should be."

Sir Bobby taught us lessons on how to play the game.

More importantly, he taught us how to cherish it, how to love it, nurture it, breathe with it, bleed for it.

The game is desperately, desperately impoverished with his passing.

But if we remember the things he stood for, for football, for tradition, history, for the escape the game brings, the feeling it engenders, the smiles it offers, the invisible umbilical chord it stretches across generations, father to son to son to son, then we will honour his memory the way he would want.

Black armbands and minute's silences are right and proper.

But loving the game, protecting it, relishing it, that is the living legacy he leaves behind.

What better life's work than that?

Rest easy Sir Bobby.

There will be an in-depth tribute to Sir Bobby Robson in Saturday week's matchday programe against Newcastle (ko 5.30pm).