Old Father Tyne has Newcastle ticking As his sixty-seventh birthday approaches, Robson is hailed as the great redeemer by Toon Army

I am not going to make the mistake of a colleague who kidded Bobby about his great age. ''Right,'' challenged the manager, ''we'll meet tomorrow morning, first thing, and I'll take you on over 400 metres. And I'll win.'' The race never took place.

So I go upstairs with Freddie Fletcher, the Newcastle director, and we have a cup of tea in the company of the likes of Alan Shearer, Duncan Ferguson, Warren Barton, Kevin Gallacher, Robert Lee, Nikos Dabizas from Greece, Dider Domi from France, Temuri Ketsbaia the Georgian, and a 19-year-old kid from Paraguay called Diego Gavilan who may, one day, be a very big name indeed.

There are two unusual aspects to the group in the lunch room.

Everyone speaks English to everybody else and there are no mobile phones to be seen or heard. That is not normal in the modern Premier clubs. But these are Bobby's orders and he also decreed that everyone was to eat together and nobody was to leave until he said so. Robson is building a team, and first he has to create the right spirit.

This is only one of the hard lessons he has learned after decades in the football management business. Remember, this is the man who built a whole team at Ipswich, who was the England team manager for eight years, took them to the World Cup quarter-finals in 1986, and to the semis four years later.

Among his ''rewards'' for those efforts was to be labelled ''a plonker'' in one newspaper while another demanded of him ''For God's Sake Go!'' He did. Robson went off to earn even more managerial honours, not to mention a bit of cash, in Portugal, Holland, and Spain. Bobby also had to beat the hardest opponent of the lot, cancer, and came through it with typical courage. This is a man who has done it his way all right.

Now he is home, among the people he loves; the boy born in County Durham, the son of a Methodist miner, is back now as the unchallenged field marshal of the Toon Army. I am taken to meet him in the doctor's room, the quietest place which can be found.

Robson, of course, was brought to Newcastle in late August following the demise of Ruud Gullit, a man largely unlamented on Tyneside. That would also be true of his predecessor, Kenny Dalglish, who brought to the club a collection of Dad's Army types and foreigners of whom little has been heard since.

Gullit relegated Shearer and Ferguson to the bench while he would not even assign a number for Lee's jersey. ''The talent was here when I arrived - it was just not functioning,'' says Robson. ''Some players had simply lost their careers and confidence was low. The morale in the dressing-room was worse than I had realised.

''There were so many injuries it was unbelievable . . . so I did not believe it. Instead, I sat down with every one of them to discuss each of their problems.

''Ferguson is a good example. He was always breaking down with different injuries and he had lost his enthusiasm. I told him I wanted him in my team, week in, week out, that the club needed a return on their investment.

''I found him a really good guy to work with. When he is playing well, as he is now, he is just awesome. It is not my main concern as to whether he plays for Scotland or not in the future, but I think they would be a better side with him in it.

''Shearer? No, he wasn't doing well earlier this season, his game had become a bit static. I simply told him that he was always going to me my choice as captain and that I believed in his ability.

''Alan has been a tremendous example to everybody. The other day he trained when he had tonsilitis; now he didn't have to do that, but he felt, with an important game with Manchester United coming up, he should make the effort.

Shearer went on to score twice in the 3-0 victory and took the man of the match award.

''He is my man in the dressing-room, where I rarely go; he will alert me to any problems. On the field he has been simply fantastic. Look at the number of games he plays, yet he gives 90 minutes every time. Leave him on the bench? - no I don't see myself doing that.

''The other thing I did from the start, was to change the training routines to make them more interesting. You train as you play. Tactically, I made one important change - I insisted when we went away from home we played a bit more defensively. Some of these guys had forgotten what it was like to take away points.''

Lee was soon restored to first team action and is another who would go through brick walls for the new manager.

Robson is a tactile man - he'll tap your arm or touch your knee to emphasise a point and he will talk football until the entire cow-herd comes home. But what is he still doing in management? A man of his years, with no financial worries, could play golf, do a little television summarising, write the odd article here and there. He laughs, knowing well his own weaknesses.

''I tried to take it easy after I came back from PSV Eindhoven but I was itching to be working again. My problem then was there did not seem to be any openings at the top Premier clubs, which was the only arena in which I wanted to appear.

''Then Ruud walked away and suddenly the team I had supported since boyhood - they bled black and white in my family - was without a manager. No, I didn't apply for the job, I just let it be known that I was interested.

''The board here were very honest. They told me two things - one that they thought it would be very difficult to turn the club round after so much turmoil, secondly that they had no money.

''That made it hugely challenging for me, but it did make it an offer I could not refuse.

''How long will I go on doing it? As long as my head, my heart, and my legs keep working simultaneously.''

Robson is on a contract until the end of the season, but I can tell you now that he will be given another one whatever happens.

He joked that beating Manchester United might be a signal for an increased wage claim. In truth, if the club were penniless, he would still be there.

I asked, in passing, about John Barnes' demise at Celtic, remembering it was he who introduced him into the England side. It was also Robson who dropped Kevin Keegan and was spat at the next time he went to St James' Park.

''It is sad for John but, quite honestly, you are always judged on results in this game. Maybe he will bounce back. I hope so.

''The England job? Yes, that certainly had its ups and downs. I did it eight years and I had a file on every player in the country, knew them all.

''Then the FA decided they wanted me to go even before the World Cup finals in 1990. When we finished fourth they were a bit embarrassed. Since then there have been Graham Taylor, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, none of whom lasted too long, though I certainly wish Kevin well.

''Part of the problem is that sections of our media simply refuse to believe they play good football abroad. They expect England to beat everybody. At the end there were certain papers I just did not read, but that doesn't stop your family being hurt.

''Yet, you know, I loved managing my country's team. England winning at Wembley was for me greater than your club being successful in the FA Cup final.''

Hey, I say, you could be back there with Newcastle this season. ''Well that would be wonderful but our first priority is to make sure of our place in the Premier. But I am off this afternoon to watch our next Cup opponents, Tranmere. The game is on the box, but I just feel I can learn more about them by being there.''

Anyone will tell you how typical that is of Robson. He is an ardent English nationalist who feels passionately about the place of the game in society. Against Alex Ferguson's team he started with only two non-Brits; he is never likely to field a Chelsea-style squad of foreigners.

''I'll tell you what is most important here - it is to build up the youth policy, to produce more youngsters from the locality. There are plenty fish in the sea and we, through a revamped scouting system, have got to catch them.

''Alex Ferguson has done the same at Manchester, that's one of the things I admire most about him. I have said to the board here if they give me time I will bring in some boys.

''In this part of the country the big clubs are ourselves and Sunderland and there are a lot of kids who would be thrilled to play for either of us.

''I did persuade the club to part with some money and managed to get Kevin Gallacher from Blackburn. He is just the kind of wholehearted player we need right now. It would be nice to have the kind of cash my predecessors had to play with, but I live within the club's means.''

The car is waiting to whisk him off to Tranmere and there are still more folk eager for a word. He bounds along the corridor dispensing wisdom like a GP with medicine, a man in his element.

Once before I had come to Newcastle to interview a manager. It struck me then, as I talked to Kevin Keegan, that you had to be more than just a team picker to satisfy the aspirations of everybody who supports this club.

Every home game is a sell-out, they are in the process of making one grandstand even bigger and higher but the ambition of the fans is the loftiest point of all.

They took to Keegan because he was the young Messiah who made his team play in adventurous, thrilling, if sometimes suicidal style.

David Ginola was his playmaker with Shearer and Les Ferdinand the strike force. After Keegan, the Dalglish and Gullit sides were about as exciting as watching the grass grow.

Now they have Robson, the old maestro who has learned to mix caution with flair.

He is in their hearts because he is, in fact, one of them.

''I am a lucky man,'' he insists.