Town’s farewell to football great
Former mining community remembers England World Cup hero and former Ireland boss Jack Charlton
THE DECADES fell away in the back lane behind Beatrice Street, where two World Cup winners once knocked a ball about.
As Jack Charlton’s funeral cortege passed by, and people threw flowers on to the hearse, his grandchildren reflected on one of the great sporting careers of the last century.
Thousands had lined the streets, wearing their England, Ireland, Leeds and Newcastle scarves in tribute, and as the procession approached the old family home at number 114, only one face was missing.
Sir Bobby Charlton, Jack’s younger brother by three years, was not well enough for the trip to Northumberland, the family said.
Ashington was a pit town when they grew up there. The mines have gone but the gridiron of terrace houses, and the back alleys between them, remain.
“The footballer, the friend, the family man we all knew was forged in Ashington,” said Jack’s grandchildren Emma, Kate and Tom Wilkinson. “He could never have imagined how remarkable his life would go on to be.”
Peter Mather, a 68-year-old bricklayer, was in Ashington yesterday, just as he had been when England saw off West Germany at Wembley and held aloft the Jules Rimet trophy.
“I lived over the road from here and I vividly remember watching the World Cup final,” he said.
“At the final whistle, he went to his knees, a big hard man like that showing such emotion. I’ll never forget it.”
His grandchildren pondered on his thoughts at that moment. “Was it pure elation? The gravity of the achievement? Or relief that the hopes of a nation had been realised?” No, they said – he had always insisted that he was plain exhausted.
Charlton, who died on July 10, aged 85, was not only part of England’s World Cup winning squad in that far-away summer of 1966, but also an essential part of Leeds United’s most successful team. He had joined the club’s ground staff at 15 and stayed for 23 years, a spell broken only by National Service. He lived almost long enough to see them restored last week to the top tier of English football for the first time in 16 years.
He was also a successful manager, most memorably with the Republic of Ireland, where, his grandchildren noted, they called him the English Irishman. “Ireland was a great fit for grandad: the people, the ‘craic’, the salmon fishing, the Guinness – and a bit of football thrown in,” they said. Patrick Wilson, a native of Ireland and resident of Northumberland, tried to put his finger on how Charlton had reconciled the two communities.
“He was a simple sort of person with no airs or graces,” he said. “Everyone was the same in Jack’s eyes.”
His grandchildren added: “His achievements in England and Ireland brought him great recognition, but he always had his feet firmly on the ground. In fact he found fame endearingly novel and he would have been really chuffed with all the nice things people have been saying about him in the past week or so.
“He was rightly proud of all his footballing achievements and they helped shape the person he was, but they are just parts of a life full of love, generosity.”
He could never have imagined how remarkable his life would go on to be. Emma, Kate and Tom Wilkinson, grandchildren of Jack Charlton.