‘Jack could cast a fly into anything!’
WHEN Micheál O’Dowd from Clochán received a phone call on Saturday morning to say Jack Charlton had passed away, it was news he was ‘ half expecting’ to hear. Micheál is a friend of the Charltons since the days when Jack and his wife, Pat, stayed in O’Connor’s Guest House in Clochán (run by Micheál). He had known Jack was unwell, but it makes the news of his death no less difficult to comprehend.
“I’d known Jack was in poor health through a friend of the Charlton family. It saddened me to hear he’d died. He loved Ireland, and he loved the social isolation Clochán offered – a place he visited many times,” he said.
Micheál last met Jack in December 2016 on a visit to Newcastle, an occasion when he managed to hold Jack’s precious world cup winner’s medal from 1966.
“I just wanted to visit him and say ‘ thanks’ for allowing me to be a part of his life and vice-versa. I remember knocking on the door and Jack shouting out the top window: ‘for crying out loud, will you just come on in’. We sat down for tea and we just discussed life in general,” Micheál said.
Micheál explained how Jack loved coming to Clochán ‘ to do nothing’ and just be himself. Micheál and his late wife, Sherry, often travelled the Dingle Peninsula with Jack and Pat. People in Clochán respected Jack’s privacy, and they gave him space. But Micheál says Jack always found time for people.
“He really had time for the people here. I remember his wife, Pat, telling me: ‘ people think Jack has no patience, which is far from true.’ I remember people asking him about England in ’66 and winning the World Cup; he answered every question like he was answering it for the first time,” Micheál said.
Micheál insists that during Jack’s tenure as Ireland manager he helped lay the foundation blocks for Ireland’s economic boom and eventual peace process.
“Here was an Englishman with no real association with Ireland. He went against the perception Irish people have, or had, of English people and their airs and graces. Jack didn’t have any of that, and people related to this. He was down to earth, from a working-class family. He accepted everyone for who they were.”
Micheál first met Jack in New York in February 1991 when, as chairman of the Queen’s Park Rangers New York Football Club, he invited Jack as a guest of honour to their function at Sally O’Brien’s Bar. From here, Jack invited Micheál to Wembley for the Ireland versus England game. Micheál and Sherry also attended a friendly game between Ireland and the US in Foxboro Stadium.
JACK UNDERSTOOD LIFE AND THE ORDINARY PERSON
“I was getting jerseys signed after that game when Jack took Sherry to a reception. Even though people were constantly coming over to him, he engaged her in conversation all the
WELL-known Killarney angler Timo O’Sullivan got to know Jack Charlton at an outing for disabled anglers in the 1990s, which took place in Bantry and in Jack’s home city of Newcastle. Jack’s love of the fishing rod is no secret, and Timo has fond memories of spending time in Jack and Pat Charlton’s company.
“Jack was the patron of the event. He loved angling and he could cast a fly into anything. He was a very sociable, time until I arrived. Jack understood life and the ordinary person. He was one of the most obliging people I’ve ever encountered in my life,” said Micheál. easygoing character who was mad for chat and a bit of banter,” said Timo.
The four ‘ top rods’ in the competition in Bantry would qualify for a trip to Newcastle to take part in the event. Timo made the journey on three occasions having been placed in 1997 and 1998, before eventually winning the competition in 1999.
“One of the years we were over, an angler from the north of Ireland named Andy Hamilton won a cup and insisted on filling it with whiskey,” Timo explains. “The whiskey was no sooner in the cup when it started leaking through the bottom. Andy put a pint glass under it to save every drop of whiskey. He asked Jack, ‘will you take a drop of it?’ To which Jack said, ‘I sure will’. Jack’s wife Pat said ‘will you take it down from your head’ as Jack liked a social drink,” Timo laughs.
Timo recalls being enamoured by Jack and Pat and their friendly way with people.
“I was sad and it was lovely the way his family spoke about him. He was a very ordinary man. He would sit and chat with us until Pat would say ‘ It’s time to go, Jack’. Jack would be in no hurry. He loved company and he loved Irish people. I think he got something from Ireland that he didn’t get at home in England,” Timo said.