It was always Jack’s way or the highway
Fights, flights, funny formations and forgotten names .... Charlton’s club career makes for a fascinating story
JACK CHARLTON’S straight-up methods as a football manager won him and the Republic of Ireland a place in the World Cup quarter-finals in 1990, but Jack insisted on playing the game his way the minute he hung up his boots at Leeds United in 1973 and was quickly appointed Middlesbrough team boss. In the next 10 years, as he managed Middlesbrough, Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle, Jack warned his players away from ‘tippy-tappy’ football, as one of his Boro stars Graeme Souness remembers. Jack’s way won Boro promotion to the old First Division, and also helped Wednesday out of the old Third Division. But, at Newcastle, he found it more difficult to convince quality playmakers like Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle to follow his doctrine on the field. In the book, ‘Jack Charlton: The Authorised Biography’ family and friends, and those who knew him as ‘Boss’, tell their stories.
LEEDS UNITED John Charlton
We used to live in a house on a street opposite Elland Road.
To me, around about 11, 12 years of age, Elland Road was like a playground to me. I had the freedom of the ground, every day, not just match days. But I didn’t know any different. That’s how I was brought up and it was the norm for me.
I’d walk out of the house, round a horseshoe, couple of hundred yards and the ground was in front of me. On a match day I never had a ticket, never had a pass. They’d let me in; I’d go to a refreshment bar in the ground where this woman used to always give me a hot drink, like a combination of oxtail soup and Bovril which I can still taste now.
There was a big, fat ex-policeman who still used to be in his uniform, always on duty. He was the laundry man as well and he would clean the players’ strips. Then he’d hang the shirts on coat-hangers on rails across the walls in this boiling hot room to dry them off. And there was a boot room with all the players’ boots on pegs, and there were big boxes, just full of studs for replacements.
I’d spend most days during the school holidays at the ground and I could go anywhere I wanted. At one point they built a sauna, and me and my dad used to go in there after training, then have a shower or a bath and head home.
Norman Hunter
Being a Geordie, like Jack, he really took me under his wing and he liked to look after me. He was always the boss, always the one that was in charge and of course, looking back, he was never wrong and it was never his fault but we learned a lot from him because he was the linchpin.
When he really and truly put his mind to it, 100 per cent, I don’t think there was a better centrehalf around at that time. But getting him to put his mind on the job all the time was difficult. I used to like it when a centre-forward bashed him or battered him in the first five minutes because then he got angry and he would be superb.
I was a bit younger than Jack and his big mate was Billy Bremner, and the younger lads like myself, Terry Cooper, Paul Madeley, and Mick Jones used to love winding Jack up. And it never did take much but you knew, when the bottom lip started to quiver, it was time to get out of the road because he was going to blow.
Jack and Gary Sprake had a love/hate relationship. There was a mutual respect but they were always very close to exploding. I remember Sprakey coming out for a ball once, and he shouted ‘MINE… JACK’ and then ‘JACK… YOURS’ and when he came out, he punched Jack and the ball.
Jack fell on the ground. I went over, Jack had broken his nose and there was blood everywhere.
He said to me, ‘Why doesn’t that stupid **** shout for the ball?’ He played for six weeks with a broken nose and I remember to this day the gaffer said, ‘You’ll be all right Jack,’ and we’d say, ‘Go on big man… head that one… head this one’ and he did. And if he didn’t head it with his forehead, it would invariably hit him on the nose and you’d hear him swearing.
Duncan Revie
It’s neither here nor there, but the correct pronunciation of our surname is ‘Ree-vie’, and, for some reason, Jack always insisted on saying ‘Rev-vie’. But then he didn’t know the names of half the players in the Ireland team, so I guess we were lucky he remembered!
I’m only speaking anecdotally but they had two major conversations. The first when my dad was playing alongside Jack and told him if he was manager, he wouldn’t play Jack because he didn’t take his football seriously enough.
The second was after my dad had taken over, and he said: ‘Listen, you silly bugger, if you play the game properly, you could play for
England’. Jack didn’t really believe him when he said it. After the ‘66 final, my dad went into his office, and Jack’s medal was on the table. Jack had left a note.
‘That’s for you boss’.
Pat Charlton
Leeds United had tried to run a football shop but they were not very successful. So Jack and I just had this idea to start a club shop. To begin with it was a shed with a drop down window; we sold hats, scarves, little photos, shirts, etc.
I used to work before every match until about five minutes after kickoff, then, I’d come back out five minutes before the end of the game, and start selling again. It just got bigger and bigger and more popular, and in the end we had three shops. Leeds wanted to take them off us and start running them, but Don Revie said no. He said it was Jack’s business and he should be allowed to continue.
For all the time Jack was playing for Leeds, we ran the club shops and when Jack left we sold them to the club.
MIDDLESBROUGH Graeme Souness
When Jack came, I was in the reserves and I used to drive him mad, telling him I should be in the team from the age of 18 onwards.
And he said, ‘Look, you’ve got the talent but I have seen hundreds of players like you in the history of football that have had talent and have not used it, and wasted it.
‘There are two doors for you.
There is one you can walk out of to use your talent, make something of yourself and perhaps be a player one day. The other one is to throw it all away.’
He was not an arm-round-the-shoulder manager; it was blunt, straight to the point. He said what he had to say in a very basic and straightforward manner. It was great for me at the time.
He liked aggressive players. And he liked everyone to have a right go. Aggression in football comes in many different guises.
It can be the goalkeeper commanding his box or the centre-forward running at full throttle in a race for a through-ball and knocking people out of his way to get there.
And he liked aggression in midfield and I enjoyed playing for him. I needed strong management and he gave me that. He knew in those days we liked a night out. And sometimes we bumped into him in the same places. He enjoyed himself as well. There was a time for that, and a time to work hard.
And we were all terrified of him, so we did as we were told. He had a temper on him, which we saw a few times. But you knew where you stood with him. You just had to deal with it.
David Hodgson
We were on the pitch next to the first team when Jack played in one of his last five-a-sides with the first team. John Craggs put him on his arse, right in front of the TV cameras. Almost as soon as he hit the ground, Jack got up and ran after Craggsy, who thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. Jack was going mental… shouting and screaming at him, and would not give up running.
He must have chased him for 20 minutes, with the cameras still filming the whole thing.
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY
Gary Megson
He was innovative and came up with ideas; some worked, some didn’t, but he was never afraid to do something different.
He had worked out one particular free-kick routine. He wanted me to hit the ball like a shot. It couldn’t be one foot off the ground, or five foot, it had to be between two and four.
McCulloch was then supposed to come in with a diving header as the keeper is coming across, and put it to the other side of the goal.
It just wasn’t working and I couldn’t get this ball exactly at three foot. So he strode on to the pitch in his wellies, pushes me to one side and says, ‘Here… this is what I want’.
And he plays this ball perfectly across for McCulloch to score.
While I think he was pretty frugal with his club’s money, my experience is that he was very different with his own. I know quite a few stories of him helping players out who were in financial trouble and he never asked for it back.
When he signed Gary Shelton, the club put him in a hotel, while Gary Bannister and myself were in a club house. After training Jack told us we had to take Gary Shelton out for a meal to make him feel welcome. A week later Jack pulled out this piece of paper and said, ‘What’s this?’ It was a copy of the bill for the meal.
‘I told you to take him out for a meal,’ he said, ‘not that we were bloody paying for it.’
And he made us pay back the money to the club.
NEWCASTLE
Peter Beardsley
Before pre-season in the promotion season, Malcolm Brown snapped his Achilles so he was out for the season before we’d even kicked a ball.
So Malcolm returned for the start of the following season when Jack came in and we were training one day; 11 v 11 in a session with Willie McFaul, who did most of the training.
Jack was standing at the side in his suit and shoes and suddenly he steps on to the pitch, stops the game and shouts… “Hang on”.
He walks over to Malcolm and he takes him by the hand, takes him into the right back position and he says… ‘What I want you to do young ‘un… is to boot that ball as high as you can into that corner.
‘Because what’s up there?’ and he points up to the sky. And Malcolm went… ‘Clouds?’ And Jack said: ‘No son… God’s up there. ‘We play one-two with God.’ And with that, he flicked his shoe off, grabbed the ball and, standing there in just his sock, he booted this ball high into the sky. It was unbelievable. He could not have picked the ball up and placed it any better in the corner of the pitch. It dropped and died in the corner. “That’s what I want,” he said. And then he picked his shoe up, slipped it back on and walked off.
We played Arsenal away midweek in his fourth game, when we were top, and we got absolutely battered. And we were going to Old Trafford on the Saturday. As we were leaving Highbury, he said, “I’ll see you at Old Trafford on Saturday lads”.
And we were all looking at each other thinking,
‘He’s taking the p***… isn’t he?’
But he says, ‘I’m off grouse shooting’.
We really thought we’d see him at training on Friday. But no, sure enough, we didn’t see him until the Saturday when he came into the dressing room at quarter to two. People think I had a problem with him, but I really didn’t. He’s a smashing fella. I didn’t agree with his philosophy in terms of what he wanted and how he wanted to play the game, but I never had a problem with him. I loved him to bits.
Chris Waddle
He was brilliant with names. Like the day of George Riley’s first game. Jack came into the dressing room on the Friday as he usually did to name the team.
We were all sat round waiting. And he goes… ‘Right… ghoulkeeper is the ghoulkeeper. Right back is the big laird, two centrebacks… the big laird and the big laird, left back, (which was Kenny Wharton) the little laird. Right wing (me)… the big laird, centre mids… the two big lairds, left wide (Peter Beardsley)… the little laird, up front… the big laird and...’ And he started to click his fingers as he looked at George Riley.
And he said, ‘…and up front… erm… erm…erm… ‘… what’s your name son?’ Still clicking his fingers. George Riley looked at the rest of us as if to say, ‘Is he serious?’ And then he said, ‘You signed me yesterday from Watford for £200,000… I’m George Riley’.
And Jack said, ‘Aaah… is that your name? I always knew George Riley as the big laird’.
He took us to Benidorm after we had been knocked out of the cup. We were away for five days and after three days everyone was skint. Jack was sat in the bar and the lads told me to go to him and ask for a sub to see us through the last few days.
They said, ‘He likes you… you go’.
So I went over, he saw me and said, ‘Hello Chris lad, how are you? Do you want a coffee?’ So we had a coffee and sat chatting for 10 minutes, and eventually I got round to the subject of him lending me some money.
But when I asked him for a couple of hundred pesetas — he spluttered… ‘You are fooking joking?’ Then sat patting his pockets and said, ‘Anyway… I’m fooking skint’.
So I pleaded with him, and promised to pay him back. And he took off his flat cap and bundles of notes fell to the floor. He picked up about 100 pesetas, handed it to me and said… ‘Now, piss off’. The rest of the lads were round the corner watching us, pissing themselves, and when I showed them my 100 pesetas, the others decided to have a go. So over the course of the next day, one by one, they went through the same routine before he took the money from under his cap and told them to scatter.
When we returned to training the following week, he pulled me to one side and said, ‘Hey Chris, did I lend you some money in Spain?’ And I said, ‘Who… me gaffer? No gaffer. It wasn’t me’. And he said, ‘Well I lent somebody some bloody money but I can’t remember who it was. And I’m down 600 quid’. And then he pulled in every one of the lads asking the same question, and everyone denied it.