GLENN Roeder, who died last Sunday at the age of 65, was a man I encountered briefly, but memorably.
In the spring of 2006, I was doing a week’s work experience at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle under the guidance of the great Alan Oliver.
Ollie is a legend on Tyneside, an oldschool newspaperman who broke the story of Alan Shearer’s world-record transfer from Blackburn and - perhaps most famously - came to blows with Laurent Robert.
After Newcastle had beaten Wigan that Saturday, he beckoned me into a small booth just off the main press room. Roeder was there, that crooked...