Joe Kinnear
Footballer who won the Uefa Cup and as a manager kept Wimbledon near the top of the league
JOE KINNEAR, who has died aged 77, was a popular footballer and manager who amassed a collection of silverware with Tottenham Hotspur on the pitch before going into management and consolidating Wimbledon’s right to be called a top-level team in the early days of the Premier League; though warm, affable and witty, he was no stranger to profanity, and one memorable expletive-strewn press conference when he was manager of Newcastle United led to him being dubbed “JFK”, as in “Joe F-----g Kinnear”.
Joseph Patrick Reddy was born on December 27 1946 in Dublin. His father, also Joe, worked at the Guinness brewery. Joe’s marriage to Margaret was troubled, and when Joe, Jr, was eight, Margaret took him and his four sisters to England to a council estate in Watford, where she had set up home with Gerry Kinnear, whose name Joe took; he attended the local Leggatt’s Way Secondary Modern.
He captained Watford Boys and Hertfordshire Boys, and though Watford FC turned him down, his defensive capabilities led to him being taken on by St Albans City of the Isthmian League, working as a machine operator during the week.
Then in 1963 he was picked up by Tottenham Hotspur, initially on amateur terms, under the careful tutelage of the great Spurs manager Bill Nicholson. “My skill was never as great till I went to Spurs,” he told Hunter Davies in the 1972 book The Glory Game, in which the author spent a season with the team. “They taught me, just simple things, like trapping the ball.”
He stepped up to the first team in April 1966, and a year or so later was at right-back, the youngest player on the pitch, as Chelsea were beaten 2-1 in the FA Cup final; he was named man of the match by many papers. (It came a few months after he had made his Ireland debut in a 2-1 defeat against Turkey, the first of 26 caps.)
His Cup bonus came to £2,500: he gave his mother £500, his sisters £30 and a new outfit each, bought his grandmother in Dublin a TV and an armchair, and himself a new Ford Corsair for £600. He then took his extended family for a six-week holiday in Ireland until the money ran out. “I couldn’t get rid of it quick enough,” he recalled.
He became great friends with his teammate, the redoubtable Dave Mackay, and the pair were regular visitors to Walthamstow dog track after training.
Not long after the Cup final he broke his leg and was out for a year, but he went on to play more than 200 times for Spurs over the next 10 years, and in 1971 and 1973 he added to his medal collection as Spurs beat Aston Villa and Norwich respectively in the League Cup final. Those two achievements sandwiched another gong, for the inaugural Uefa Cup in 1972, when Spurs beat Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-2 on aggregate.
He was so focused on his career, he told Hunter Davies, that “outside football I don’t know anything. The world could be coming to an end and I wouldn’t know unless it was on the sports pages.” But he had a canny sense of having to think about the future, and while he was still playing he started a property company, buying two large houses in Watford and converting them into flats, buying a stake in a furniture shop and taking over a pub.
He left White Hart Lane in 1975; his tally of two goals for the club in nearly a decade underlines his status as an old-school full-back, solid in defence but leaving much of the attacking to the attackers. He moved to Brighton, but played only 16 games for the Seagulls before retiring aged 30, a fine career ended by knee-ligament damage.
He went straight into management but took an unconventional route, spending five years in the United Arab Emirates as assistant manager at Sharjah and Al-shabab under his pal Dave Mackay, and had a stint coaching in Malaysia before taking on the national sides of India and Nepal.
He followed Mackay back to England, working with him at Doncaster Rovers, then taking over briefly as caretaker manager when the Scot left for Birmingham City. He was replaced by Billy Bremner when a consortium bought the club, and decamped to Wimbledon to take charge of the reserves.
When Peter Withe was sacked in 1992 Kinnear was given the reins at Plough Lane – and led the Crazy Gang to sixth place in the Premier League in 1994 (finishing above the likes of Liverpool and Everton); he was named Manager of the Month three times during the campaign.
Turning down the chance to replace Jack Charlton as Ireland manager because the money was unsatisfactory, in 1997 he led the Dons to the semi-finals of the League Cup and FA Cup and to eighth place in the league. When the club was sold to a group of Norwegians there were rumours that he would be replaced, but he carried on until March 1999, when he suffered a heart attack before a game against Sheffield Wednesday.
He stood down and was replaced by Egil Olsen; Wimbledon were relegated the following season.
After a spell away from the game, he briefly served as director of football at Oxford United but resigned through ill health – which did not deter him from taking the same role at Luton Town in 2001. Like Oxford, they were battling relegation from the Second Division – and Kinnear’s response was to install himself as manager.
He was unable to prevent demotion but took the Hatters straight back up, only to be sacked in 2003 when the club was sold to a consortium. In February 2004 he took over at Nottingham Forest, then threatened with relegation from the First Division (the second tier of the domestic game at the time). He guided them to mid-table respectability, only to resign before he was sacked at the end of the year following a downturn in results.
After four years away, Kinnear returned to the game in 2008, following the unexpected resignation of Kevin Keegan as caretaker manager of Newcastle United; he was reportedly 25th on the list of possible replacements.
His first press conference would go down in football history. Annoyed at the papers’ scepticism about his suitability for the role (which he later admitted he had not read), and irked by reporters asking him how long he was contracted for, he vented his anger at the outset.
“Who’s Simon Bird?” he asked. The Daily Mirror writer identified himself. “You’re a c---,” Kinnear told him. “Thank you,” said Bird, sitting back down.
Kinnear embarked on a rant that contained dozens of f-words, a clutch of b-words and five more c-words. At the end, the beleaguered press officer pleaded with the assembled company not to publish the specifics – “f-----g print it, I don’t care,” insisted Kinnear – and begged for some football-related questions. There was a silence. “Any knocks?” one hack sarcastically inquired.
Kinnear’s spell on Tyneside came to an end a few months later when he had to have a cardiac bypass; Alan Shearer took over but was unable to prevent the drop. Kinnear went back briefly as director of football in 2013-14, but his return was characterised by confused interviews and mispronunciations of players’ names. In 2015 he was diagnosed with vascular dementia.
Joe Kinnear is survived by his wife Bonnie and their daughter; their son predeceased him..