A BOSS, FRIEND AND FATHER
Jack’s boys in green share stories of the man who brought them to the highest point in their careers and took us along too
IRELAND 1988 Niall Quinn
I walked into the reception of the hotel and Jack was holding court with a few journalists. As I came close to the group, Jack turned to Maurice Setters and said, ‘Bloody hell, Maurice. We haven’t picked that lanky buggah… have we?’ ‘Think we had to,’ said Maurice. And there it was. Elated to deflated in one nanosecond. And it was done in front of the public so you could see the journalists all thinking… ‘Christ… now Quinn doesn’t even know he’s been picked’.
But that was just his way. His whole leadership model was just to make the players feel great about themselves, without telling them that they’re great.
Whereas some managers would say… ‘you’re great… you’re great, you’re great’, Jack might say… ‘you’re fooking hopeless, but you might go and prove me wrong today’ and he’d laugh and you’d think… ‘I’ll show him’.
Jack would play cards down the back of the bus and we’d always play hearts. At the most, on your worst day ever, you might lose a fiver but it’s a game where you try and chase the leader all the time. And if you went after Jack, he would look at you, give you a look and you just knew there was a chance he might not pick you for the next game.
He’d look at you, steely blue eyes, and you knew what he was thinking and he knew that you knew what he was thinking… so you’d go and hit someone else in the group. Then they would give out at you, asking, ‘what are you doing?’ and Jack would be sat there laughing his head off.
We used to play golf at the hotel in Monaghan where we used to stay. I was playing with Jack and Packie on the first green, playing for a fiver a man.
Jack had a five foot putt to win the hole. And he put the ball in the hole by rolling it with the putter along the ground and dragging it in.
Packie and I stood looking at each other, as if to say… ‘what do we say?’ ‘Are you going to say anything?’ ‘No! Are you?’ Of course we were afraid to say a word, so we just walked off towards the next tee.
IRELAND 1990 Mick McCarthy
I think Jack did respect that belligerence and stubborn streak and fighting qualities, and it is what I like in players, of course. I don’t like milky centre halves; I like leaders. He will always say he had good players but even with good players you have to get the best out of them and he got the best out of us.
I remember asking him about players taking off some nights. I said to him, ‘You know those two rooms you and Maurice used to share, top of the corridor; the only way in and out?
‘You two must have heard us coming in at two, three or four o’clock in the morning, making noise, thinking we were being quiet.
‘Did you really never hear us?’ And he said, ‘Of course we bloody heard you. But if I stuck my nose out of the door and saw you, I had to deal with it and what was the point? So we just left you to it.’
Managing players. The penny drops. At your club, that’s two weeks wages and a serious offence. But he knew we were all doing it and he knew that on Wednesday we would play like hell and give him everything, and we always did.
Andy Townsend
The Pope made a bit of a fuss of Packie because he’d been a goalkeeper in Poland. When he came into the private room he told Packie, ‘I will be keeping a special eye on you and keep my fingers crossed for you’.
As you know we lost 1-0 and Packie spilled Donadoni’s shot to Schillaci for the winner.
We were in the dressing room and we were all disappointed. Jack was trying to lift us. ‘You gave everything, I can’t ask for any more. I am proud of you, we will have a great night tonight and a good drink and we’ll enjoy it.
A few of the lads are still sitting there not moving, one of them was Packie. Jack cajoles him to get into the shower and as he walked away, Jack turned to me and said, ‘The f ****** Pope would have saved that.’
IRELAND 1994 Trevor O’Rourke
When Paul McGrath went missing, myself, Mick Byrne and Paddy Daly, a retired Garda officer, who also used to work for the FAI, looking after the referees and their officials, were sent out to track him down. I drove round the pubs of Dublin; Mick in the back and Paddy in the front, working with the local gardaí trying to locate Paul. There were sightings everywhere. We eventually caught up with him in a pub in west Dublin and took him back to the team hotel.
You might have expected Jack to give him the biggest b ****** ing of his life. He just put his arm around his shoulders, took into his room and he was in there for an hour just talking to him. He knew when someone needed that arm round the shoulder. He knew when they needed a slap. Paul McGrath was the glue holding everything together.
David Walker
One of my personal favourite memories of Jack came at the World Cup finals in the United States in 1994. By some ludicrous quirk, the Daily Mail had booked me a hire car that was a flame-red Pontiac Firebird convertible. It was a two-seater with a shelf for a back seat.
On one rest day I ventured out in the flame red Pontiac to a shopping mall near the Orlando North Hilton where we were staying with the team. This was the hotel where Jack was supplied with a barrel of the best Guinness in his suite and would invite the media to join him. Well, as I looked around the shops
I bumped into Jack and his wife Pat. Jack asked for a lift back to the hotel, which I was happy to do, until I remembered my car only had two seats.
It’s at this point I really wished I’d had a camera with me — or we’d been spotted by the paparazzi who arrived on the scene a few years later.
I dropped the roof on the convertible, invited Pat into the front seat, and lanky Jack climbed onto the bench. I’m sure we were breaking local road traffic laws but we headed back with the manager of the Republic of Ireland perched on the back shelf, his knees tucked under his chin and no seat belt to be seen.
I’m not sure any other competing manager at the World Cup would have been seen in a similar position. But Jack was typically oblivious to the situation.
‘Thanks bonnie lad,’ he said. ‘Cheaper than a taxi!’
IRELAND 1996 Niall Quinn
We all shuffled into Harry Ramsden’s. Jack was a shareholder. Packie or Paul or somebody cut a ribbon and officially opened the place. So the night before the game, after a week of drink, I settled down to fish and chips. Gary Kelly took the Harry Ramsden’s Challenge and ate a fish about a yard long and a mountain of chips and anything else they challenged him with.
He thought there’d be a certificate but he got a free dessert instead, which he duly ate.
Jack herded us out pronto. Twenty minutes later, it’s dusk at Lansdowne Road and we’re all waddling about the pitch, groaning, full of fish and chips and trying to do a training session, the night before this must-win game. We’re burping and farting and creased over with laughter.
Our main thought was it’s been a happy era and it’s ending soon.
Sometimes you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. It was all over for Jack.
John Aldridge
We had 10 years of phenomenal success under Jack.
What a meeting that was the night he came to Oxford. He asked me if I fancied playing for Ireland, and I said, ‘yes… definitely’. Then I recommended Ray Houghton… he didn’t even know he was eligible… and what a tremendous player he went on to be for Ireland.
They were the best days of my life as a footballer. We all became massive friends and our friend was the manager. All right, Roy Keane might have felt differently towards the end, but we all had so much respect for him.
Jack used to tell me, when their defenders get the ball, you chase the b ***** ks off them. I was the first of the line to chase; that was my job. We played in their half, and it was clever.
They talk about the pressing game now, but that was how we played under Jack.
He was very old fashioned in many ways, but he was very clever. We knew as a team what he wanted and what he would not accept and if you did as you were told, you’d play… if not you’d be out.
He treated you like a man. If he saw someone drinking a Coke, he’d say, ‘What are you drinking that s*** for? Guinness is better for you’. He didn’t mind lads having a couple of pints.
On the Tuesday, I used to feel guilty if I’d had a skinful, so I’d be running my nuts off to get a good sweat, and Jack used to b ***** k me and shout across, ‘Aldo… stop f***ing running… save it for the game tomorrow’. Sometimes I used to wait until he’d gone in just so I could do a bit extra.
Two days before we were due to play Italy, the lads were getting restless so Jack said we could have a couple of pints each when the Guinness truck came to the hotel in Rome.
The Guinness was set up round the pool with all the media people hanging round, plus the Italian police who were guarding us. The cops couldn’t believe that the Ireland players were drinking two days before we were due to play Italy, and that the manager was in the thick of it.
We started playing the penny game, which basically involved putting a penny on your forehead, hitting the back of your own head until the penny falls off.
By this time, a couple of pints had turned to five or six. Jack heard the commotion, so came over and asked what the game was? And being the ultra-competitive person that he is, Jack said he wanted a go.
So Jack took his coat off to get ready and sat down. Then, Andy Townsend placed the coin on Jack’s forehead — only he took it off at the last second, without telling Jack.
And Jack was winding his arms up like a windmill to hit himself and was belting the back of his own head while of course the lads, and the Italian cops and the press, were absolutely p***ing themselves.
He must have hit himself about 10 times, full pelt as well, and then twigged and tried to grab Andy and clip him round the ear.
Paul McGrath
The reception was just amazing on his last visit to the Aviva. It was quite an unusual thing for me making sure that people were not grabbing Jack and spinning him around for autographs and so on, and for once I was the bodyguard.
I think he enjoyed it but Pat was getting a bit worried. We were in the new Jack Charlton suite, and there were a lot of famous Irish people around, but everyone wanted to speak or have their picture taken with Jack.
I had a father-son relationship with Jack and I have been scolded once or twice by him. I don’t think I would have won half as many caps for Ireland and I don’t think many managers would have gone to the lengths that he did to get me to play for Ireland.
I don’t think any other manager would have taken the time to do the things and put the stringent measures in place to keep me as part of the team.
But it was not all about football; it was also about caring for someone and trying to make things better for them.
He just wanted to make things better for me. I still think I owe him a few more shifts as his bouncer to make up for it.
O‘Jack Charlton: The Authorised Biography’ by Colin Young is published by Hero Books (€20) and is available in all good bookshops.