Ally Robertson: My tears for my dear friend Cyrille Regis, a gentle giant

It’s impossible to describe how I felt when I was told the news my dear friend Cyrille Regis had passed away.

We are talking about a true great of the game here. A pioneer.

And I feel so privileged to have met Cyrille as a teenager and been able to witness everything he achieved, both in the game and in life in general.

We used to call him the gentle giant, he was the ultimate gentleman. I used to say he was too gentle, that is how great he was.

But I’ll never forget the day we first met.

We used to play a lot of practice matches with the first-team taking on the reserves.

Then one day I’m lining up against Cyrille. He scored two stunning goals and I thought to myself ‘who is this kid?’

You could see straight away that he was something special, that he would make it in the game. And from that point on we struck up a fantastic friendship.

We would battle against one another every day in training.

Ron Atkinson used to always do these drills where we would knock it up to the striker and it was their job to take the ball down and bring others into play.

My job was to stop them and I’d try anything to stop Cyrille.

I would kick him in the leg, go through him, haul him to the ground.

And he would battle back and elbow me. But boy did we laugh, we had great fun.

Cyrille was respected by his team-mates because of his ability. But he also got on with absolutely everybody.

He was one of the main reasons we had such a strong team spirit. He was a character who brought everyone together.

Cyrille was the type of person you could always rely on. If you needed help with anything he’d be the first person to step forward.

He would do anything he could to help out. Just last month he came to support me at my book launch.

That what kind of man he was, he would put himself out to help anyone.

And what’s really hard is that he was in such fantastic shape.

I last saw him at the Albion’s game with Arsenal on New Year’s Eve and he looked as though he could still play. He was so fit.

I remember at the game we were reminiscing and laughing. It is what we did. I can’t believe we won’t be doing that again.

A lot has been said over the past 24 hours about what a pioneer Cyrille was for black players in the game. And I think it’s important we mention that.

He joined us and famously became part of the Three Degrees with Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson.

But you have to remember before then, there were only a handful of black players in the game.

The stick they used to get from away fans really wasn’t nice. But the more abuse they gave, the more – as a team – we were determined to protect them. We would stick together and fight even harder.

That was huge for those three players. And I tell you what, we won a lot of games away from home.

I can remember countless times those fans that had abused Cyrille, Laurie and Brendon would end up clapping them at the end – because they were so good.

Cyrille would never say anything about it though.

He had a fantastic relationship with the Albion fans who took to him overnight.

And he absolutely loved playing for both them and Albion.

I can remember speaking to him after he won his first England cap.

He was so proud to get that. It was such an honour for him. But it didn’t change him in anyway.

He was still the same humble Cyrille.

In total he won five England caps but he should had so many more. There were a lot of talented players around at the time.

But Cyrille was an exceptional talent. I don’t think he ever scored tap-ins, all his goals were special. He never moaned about his lack of England caps though. He was just happy playing for the Albion.

It was actually Brendon Batson who phoned me on Monday morning to tell me of his passing.

I don’t mind saying I cried my eyes out.

I’d lost a great friend. And I just felt so sorry for his wife Julia and everyone he had left behind. I’m just so grateful I have got all these wonderful memories with him. They are fantastic memories.

There is going to be so much said and written about Cyrille over the coming days, weeks and months.

And the one thing you can guarantee is that nobody will have a bad word to say about him.

He was a true great. A wonderful footballer and a true gentleman. I’m very proud to be have been able to call him a friend.