EVERYONE TREATED AS EQUAL

JACK CHARLTON was so down to earth, he kept his World Cup winner’s medal in a coal bucket.

John Anderson played under Charlton for both Newcastle and the Republic of Ireland.

And when he visited his Northumberland home, he was astonished to discover that one of the 11 men who wrote himself into English football history in 1966 did not have his memento of a famous day in pride of place.

Speaking as he paid tribute to his former manager following his death at the age of 85, Anderson said: “I remember myself and Kenny Wharton going up to see him.

“Remember the World Cup coins that you used to collect with the players’ faces on?

“He had a gold set of them and they were in a coal bucket – and beside them in the coal bucket was his World Cup winner’s medal.

“He didn’t blink an eye. ‘They’re in there’, he said, nodding at the coal bucket beside the fire.”

Charlton’s humility was a character trait which underpinned his management style as he made himself a household name in Ireland, where he became the national team’s first overseas boss.

Anderson was part of the Ireland side which reached the finals of a major tournament for the first time when they qualified for the 1988 European Championships two years before making it to the World Cup quarter-finals in Italy.

He said: “Jack might have been born and bred in England but he’s an honorary Irishman. What he did for football – and not just football, what he did for the country – was remarkable, it really was.”

Charlton’s abrasive and direct style of football may not have won over the purists.

But it proved successful and enabled a small country to compete with bigger and supposedly more illustrious opponents to astonishing effect, as both England and – at the 1994 World Cup finals – Italy can attest.

Anderson said: “It didn’t matter who you were. You could be a president, you could be a prime minister, you could be an ordinary Joe Soap in the street. It didn’t matter, Jack treated everybody exactly the same.

“There were no airs and graces about him. He wasn’t one for reputations, reputations didn’t mean anything to him, everybody was treated exactly the same.

“Nobody was on a pedestal. It didn’t matter how big a star you were or how great a player you thought you were, Jack treated you exactly the same way as he did the kitman or anybody else. That’s the way he was.”