BOOT BOY, HE COULD PLAY
JACK CHARLTON did not rate the World Cup Final of 1966 as the most memorable moment of his playing career.
Instead, top-ranked was the aftermath of a match at Anfield in April 1969 when a 0-0 draw confirmed Leeds as champions ahead of Liverpool.
Led by captain Billy Bremner, Don Revie’s team celebrated in front of the visiting fans before their boss instructed them to walk the length of the pitch towards the Kop.
Charlton and Bremner were wary but the ovation afforded to them by the Kop stayed with Big Jack forever. “That gave me the most joy in my playing career,” he would tell Sue Lawley when her guest on the Desert Island Discs radio programme.
Liverpool fans had a song about Charlton that called him as the ‘dirty big giraffe’. Charlton described it as ‘affectionate’.
He was probably right. They would have had a grudging admiration for the defensive excellence that kept that clean sheet at Anfield on that day.
The tributes that have flooded in after his passing have, unavoidably, majored on Jack the character but it is worth remembering Charlton was also a fine
BY ANDY DUNN footballer in an era when the skill of defending was more treasured.
One of his many quotes that have been headlined over the past 24 hours was the one where Charlton says he could not play but was good at stopping other people play.
The second bit was right, the first bit nonsense.
You do not make your senior debut for a topflight club at the age of 17, if you can’t play.
You do not, as a defender, score 96 goals in 773 club appearances and a further six in 35 international games, if you can’t play.
You do not become Footballer of the Year, as Charlton was voted in 1967, if you can’t play.
Liverpool, by some distance, have conceded the fewest Premier League goals this season – 27 in 35 games, an average of 0.77 per match.
In that 1968-69 title triumph, the Leeds defence – with Charlton at its heart – conceded 26 in 42 games, an average of 0.62.
Charlton was right when he described himself as “a destroyer, a batterer, a fouler”, but for all the selfdeprecation, Jack Charlton could play. Back in 1969, the Kop knew it.