So alike on the outside ...... so different inside

THE phone rang as I sat in my hotel bedroom in Sardinia, hours before we opened our 1990 World Cup programme against England. It was our kid.

"What are you ringing for?" I asked.

"I just thought I'd give you a call and wish you all the best for the game," was the reply.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You're an Englishman and we're playing England. You've never made contact to wish me well before. Why now?"

My reaction seemed to surprise him as much as his call had surprised me. It showed how distant the two of us had become how we had grown apart and gone our different ways over the years.

It's a subject which has fascinated the press for a long time. Without being boastful, I think it's fair to say that we're the most famous brothers in English football, perhaps two of the best known brothers in the entire country.

But we've rarely been seen together in public, even less when it came to socialising. And that has intrigued some of the media.

There have been little hints here and there that all was not well in the family, but neither Robert nor I has ever gone public about it until now. I knew I would never be allowed to get away without alluding to my relationship with my brother in my autobiography, and I thought it was time to put the record straight. He, almost certainly, will have his version of the story, but I have tried to tell it as honestly and as openly as I can.

So, where do we stand alter all these years, what is the relationship between the brothers who played alongside each other on the greatest day for English football? In a couple of words not good. And that saddens me greatly!

It was all so very different when we were growing up. Sure, we had different interests, sure he was a lot more reserved than I was but he was my kid brother. I was in charge of him, my mother wanted me to look after him. When his talent began to blossom no one could have been prouder of him than his elder brother Jack. And as young pros making our way in the game, we remained very close, even though he was with a glamour club and I was with struggling Second Division Leeds United.

Jealousy? I never had a jealous thought about Robert in my life. He was an extremely gifted player, perhaps one of the five best in the history of the game. And me? I never had any illusions that I could be that good. There was never any doubt about where I stood in the pecking order.

I hugged him with delight when he won his first cap for England, I cheered for him when Manchester United beat Benfica in the European Cup final, I cried for him on that terrible day when a great team was almost wiped out in the Munich air disaster. In a way, Robert was never the same lad to me after Munich. How it affected him, how it coloured his thinking, I don't know. But I saw a big change in our kid from that day on. He stopped smiling, a trait which continues to this day. Friends occasionally come up to me and say, "Your Bob goes around as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and I have to agree.

He's had a great playing career, a good life and his business is doing well. I would say that he doesn't smile as much as somebody in his position should.

Before the disaster, he'd often come over to Leeds on Sunday mornings and we'd have a couple of pints together. Often he'd bring some of his team mates with him. Afterwards he'd drive us I didn't have a car at the time up to see our parents in Ashington. He loved the place then, loved seeing his mother and father, enjoyed the sense of family. And then it all went sour.

OUR Robert was the apple of my mother's eye. Like the rest of us, she was proud that her son had done so well in the game, proud that he carried himself so well, both on and off the pitch. And was she protective! On those occasions when we played Manchester United, she'd issue me with instructions. "Now, don't you go kicking our Robert today." And I never did. I do remember one occasion, though, when he nutmegged me and I chased him back towards our goal, yelling, "Come back, you little bugger. Don't even think about putting that in our net!"

But gradually Robert withdrew more and more into himself. There was an incident in our house in Ashington one day when I sensed that he was beginning to drift away. The men in our family always had problems with losing hair. Robert lost his between the ages of twenty four and twenty eight, and my other brothers later went thin on top at roughly the same age. This incident I'm describing must have happened when Robert was still in his early twenties. We're all sat there having a meal when young Tom, who was only a boy at the time, remarked to Robert that he was going bald. Our Bob just put his head down and said, "Yeah," but I could see he was upset.

Not that a head of hair is all that important, but I suppose you're self conscious at that age. Strangely enough, my mother was always highly sensitive about it too, and she once thumped a Scottish supporter who called Robert a "baldy git".

Perhaps that was the moment when our Bob began to distance himself from the family. The more significant thing by far, however was his marriage in the early 1960s. Robert's wife.

Norma, never really got on with our mother.

There was an incident at Old Trafford which didn't help matters. My parents had become good friends of Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy after Robert had signed for Manchester United, and occasionally they'd get invitations to go and watch a game. Now, there wasn't a telephone in our house in Ashington my father never used a telephone and any communications between them and Manchester United would be conducted by letter. If they ever needed to contact either Robert or me by phone they would use a public one. And that didn't happen very often.

Matt or Jimmy invited them to Old Trafford on this occasion and, out of the blue, they happened to bump into Robert. Instead of being pleased to see them, he went mad. "What are you doing here?" he said. "Don't ever come here again unless I tell you." Now that was out of order, totally out of order. I've no idea why our Robert reacted the way he did, but it threw my mother. She couldn't understand it.

When my father and my uncle Tommy Skinner went to stay with Robert and Norma after going to watch a game at Old Trafford, Robert put them in a hotel, saying they had the decorators in. The story about the decorators might have been true but neither my father nor my uncle Tommy Skinner wanted to go back after that.

I don't understand Norma. At one time I got on quite well with her. I'd occasionally drop a fish or a pheasant into the house at Knutslord and we'd have breakfast or a cup of tea. She was very pleasant when you spoke to her at home. On the odd occasion that I met her at Old Trafford or places like that, she was a different woman. I don't know why.

People who act one way in private and another in public tend to throw me off balance. It became a situation in which I didn't feel comfortable and I never went back to their house after that.

MY mother and father later moved into a house I had bought in the Dales. Then, after my father died in 1982, she moved back to Ashington.

For six or seven years before she died, my mother saw little if anything of our Robert. He'd be in the area, opening a supermarket or something, and the neighbours would say to her, "I see Bobby was in Newcastle at the weekend, did he visit?" She'd have to admit that he didn't. And that must have hurt her no end. I'd get annoyed about it. Even when he came to Ashington itself, within hailing distance of the house, it seemed he never called round.

Now, I don't know what it was between Robert and my mother. Norma said she never influenced him, and I believed her. But the rift affected the family terribly. I couldn't understand it. I'd sometimes ask my mother, but she was very, very loath to talk about it.

I can't be a reader of my brother's mind. Maybe he doesn't think about the family the way that I do. Maybe as a bit of a mother's boy he needed to cut the apron strings. These are the questions I've posed again and again over the years.

Eventually, my mother went into a home. She was getting unsteady on her feet and on one occasion, she nearly burned herself. But still not a word from our Robert. I tried to get him to go and see her, even phone her, send a card. And he just said, "I'll do it when I think the time is right. I'll run my life the way I see it, and I'll do what I want to."

But of course I still hoped I could persuade him to go and see our mother. I caught hold of him finally at a hotel one night in London, took him to one side and tried to lay it on the line as urgently as I could. "Listen," I said, I'm sick of bloody arguing with you about going to see our mother. I don't want to mention it again. It's down to your conscience.

She desperately wanted him to go and see her. But he never did.

He did turn up on the day of her funeral, and I was pleased about that. I thanked Norma, too, for I didn't want anything to happen that would take away from our mother's funeral. By this time, the press were aware that something was wrong, and they were only too ready to make a meal of it.

Apart from the way he treated our mother, I don't hold any bad feelings towards him, even though I thought he could have been more supportive when I was being vilified over the black book episode. He knew that I was never a dirty player, and he could have spoken publicly in my defence. But he chose to hold his peace. He's always been loath to say anything which will upset anybody.

It wasn't always like that, as I've said, and there was one incident, well publicised, in the infamous World Cup game against Argentina at Wembley which proved it. I was knocked down after going for a corner kick and the Argies are standing on me and kicking me to bits. Suddenly, the kicking stops. I look up to see our kid standing guard over me. When it comes right down to it, I suppose, blood is thicker than water. That was in 1966.

After we finished playing, Robert went his way and I went mine. He once told me that he wanted to be part of the governing body in football, to have a say in the decisions which affected the game and, generally, to have an input at the top level. Although he managed Preston North End for a while, Robert was never a coach always sharing the Manchester United philosophy that they didn't need Lilleshall, they would play the game the way they wanted to play it. I of course was different. I valued my coaching badges, and I felt they made the vital difference when it came to management.

When you're striving for the things Robert is aiming for, it's probably right to be diplomatic. For many people, that is probably the biggest difference between us tend to say things without thinking them through. If it feels right, I'll say it. But our kid will invariably take two steps backwards and have a little think about it before responding. And that makes him a better diplomat than I'll ever be.

It's funny, but people sometimes mix us up. Occasionally I'll be greeted at functions with the words "Hello, Bobby," and I smile. I used to wonder if people called him Jack and if they did, how he reacted. Recently I found out that it happens to him, too. Strange, really. So alike on the outside and yet so different inside...