The man who lifted the nation
JACK CHARLTON, 1935-2020
FORMER Irish football manager Jack Charlton was remembered as a revolutionary yesterday for the role he played in Irish society, culture and sport. He passed away at his home in England on Friday night, aged 85.
President Michael D Higgins credited Charlton with bringing the country some of its most cherished moments. As manager of the Republic of Ireland, he steered the country to its first major tournament, the 1988 European Championships, and most famously the 1990 and 1994 World Cups.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin said Charlton “brought such honesty and joy to the football world”. He added: “He personified a golden era in Irish football,” and thanked him for the “magical memories”.
Football pundit Eamon Dunphy, who was a famously strong critic of the style of play Charlton utilised during his regime, credited him with having a unique impact on the Irish psyche. He said Charlton was responsible for transforming the attitude of the country. “He loved the Irish way, how people would approach him and the informality. It was very different to the English way. He loved that and the Irish people loved him in return,” Dunphy told the Sunday Independent. “I think he should be remembered for bringing a lot of pride and joy to the country.”
Dunphy credited Charlton with touching “something profound in the Irish psyche”. “Jack lifted a nation,” he added.
President Higgins said as a football manager Charlton “brought Ireland to some of our most-celebrated moments in Irish sporting history”.
The football world also paid their respects to Charlton and his family last night. Former Ireland international Packie Bonner described Charlton’s death as “the passing of an era”, calling him “an icon” that “changed our lives”.
Some of Bonner’s teammates from the country’s most successful football era also paid tribute to him. Charlton is best remembered here for his 10-year term in charge of the national team, but he also had a hugely successful career as a player, winning the 1966 World Cup on home soil in Wembley with England.
Former Ireland player Ray Houghton, who played under Charlton, said it was a “disgrace” that Charlton had not been knighted for his footballing achievements like many of his England teammates before him.
He added: “He changed everything about Irish football. His legacy is huge.”
Charlton passed away at his Northumberland residence after suffering from dementia and lymphoma. He is survived by his wife, Pat Kemp, and their three children.
AS Eamon Dunphy sat at home and reflected on Jack Charlton’s life yesterday there was no sense of regret over the infamous flying pen incident during Italia
90, and very little thought of tactics. Dunphy remembered ‘‘Big Jack’’ as a revolutionary. A cultural phenomenon.
He thought of Charlton’s nature — how even in the face of criticism from his most prominent detractor, he could show kindness and steel. Dunphy recalled a dinner they shared after Charlton’s Ireland qualified for a major tournament for the first time, Euro ’88 in Germany.
“When we drew with Russia in 1988 I had flown out and I was staying in the same hotel as them. He saw me at the bar as he was going in for a meal. The team had its own private dining room and he came over with [physio] Mick Byrne and [assistant] Maurice Setters and he asked, ‘Are you on your own?’ I said I was and he said, ‘Why don’t you have dinner with us?’
“I said ‘Jack, are you mad?’” I had been critical of the players under the previous manager, especially people like Mick McCarthy and Frank Stapleton. I said: “Jack, they’ll go f***ing mad’. He said: ‘Ah f *** them. You are coming with me.’
“He grabbed hold of me and dragged me in to the private room. What happened? Mick McCarthy and Frank Stapleton got up and walked out of the room. I said, ‘I told you, Jack’. He said, ‘Get in there and eat your dinner’. He was a force of nature.”
But it is for Italia ’90 that Jack Charlton will be best remembered in Ireland.
“The big game was the penalty shootout against Romania,” said Dunphy.
“To get a sense of what that meant you just need to look at the great Irish Times journalist John
Healy. He was their political correspondent from Mayo, who wrote a great book lamenting emigration [No One Shouted Stop!]. There was an EU gathering at Dublin Castle on the day of the Romania game and there is a piece of video of the great and good watching the penalty shootout. John Healy is among them. He was a GAA man, but when David O’Leary scored he burst into tears. It’s remarkable.
This worldly, cynical, political correspondent, no interest in soccer, but for him it was a moment of overwhelming poignancy.
Absolutely bawling.
“One of the things about those times and that Irish team is that there were a lot of people playing who had not been born in Ireland. John Aldridge and Ray Houghton for example were the sons of emigrants and I think that moment brought home to Healy this team, full of the children of children and grandchildren of emigrants, had done this. He got the significance of it. We are not talking football here. We are talking culture, folklore, folk memory.
“You could take the Robert Emmett quote about Ireland not being a nation until we take our place among the nations of the world – well here was Ireland, through the Irish soccer team, taking its place among the world, performing on a global stage, and giving a sense of pride to people. The economy was in rag order, the politics was dirty. [Charles] Haughey was in charge and it was a bad time generally. Unemployment was very high and here comes this magical thing of the Irish soccer team and their adventures, and it was a huge adventure.”
Dunphy may not have enjoyed Charlton’s tactics, but the public did. “During that whole thing I was having a coffee in the Westbury. There was a taxi rank outside with five cars on it. I opened the door of the first taxi and the guy said, ‘you can f *** off. I’m not taking you’.
“We all remember where we were for the penalty shootout against Romania. It was phenomenal. And who got the goal? Dave O’Leary. The man Jack didn’t rate.
“I don’t think Jack was big on irony. He had simple tastes. He liked the fishing, he liked the odd pint and he liked to go do his afterdinner gigs — which he called earners, and they were earners. He loved the Irish way, how people would approach him and the informality. It was very different to the English way. He loved that and the Irish people loved him in return.”
Dunphy insists this is the Charlton that will live on in his memory, not the manager with the ‘put ’em under pressure’ tactics. He will remember the Charlton everybody loved.
“I think he should be remembered for bringing a lot of pride and joy to the country. For his teams always behaving impeccably, whether they won or lost.
“Jack and what he did, touched something profound in the Irish psyche, to do with emigration, losing and not standing on our own two feet. Culture matters so much and this is popular culture at its most powerful.”
WHEN I told my twentysomething daughter Jack Charlton had just died, she looked at me quizzically and asked: ‘‘Who’s he?’’
In another era, Ireland of the late 1980s to mid-1990s, every man, woman and child knew who he was. He was so famous even his second name became superfluous; he was just Jack or Big Jack. With his wide Geordie smile and his flat cap, he defined the era that led Ireland to sporting glory and into the paws of the Celtic Tiger.
He even inspired a revival of the name Jack, just as the Marian Year defined those born in 1954. Many of his fanatical supporters drained the credit unions of funds using bogus house extensions as an excuse to raise cash to join ‘‘Jackie’s Army’’ on its European campaigns.
Names like Gelsenkirchen, Stuttgart, Cagliari and Palermo became common currency in Irish villages and towns.
Foreigners gawked in amazement as the green, white and orange hordes descended on their cities, drinking their pubs and cafes dry and then, unlike football supporters from England and Holland, charming the locals with music and singing and dancing in the street.
And as they were named “the best supporters” in various competitions, they took that to their hearts too, consumed more beer and cleared up the debris before moving on to the next destination.
While the Green Army was traversing the autobahns and besieging Italian train stations, back home when the big match kicked off on television a weary photographer would trudge down to O’Connell Street to take that iconic shot — an empty, silent street in the middle of the day. It would take a quarter of a century and a world pandemic to produce the same effect again.
And afterwards, for the celebrations, people wrapped in tricolours would come pouring out of pubs, dancing on the pathways as cars with delirious supporters drove wildly up and down honking their horns. It was Beirut without the gunfire.
The difference under the reign of King Jack was that for a change Ireland were winning.
Of course it wasn’t always pretty — qualification often came down the wire, someone else lost and suddenly we were on the road to Europe. We squeezed out a draw here, won unexpectedly there and when it came down to penalties we were in the quarter-finals of the Euros or the World Cup.
As one who was never part of Jackie’s Army, or even donned a green jersey, it began for me on a sunny Sunday afternoon, June 12, 1988. I was passing O’Dwyers pub in suburban Kilmacud when this sudden and mighty roar went up and I managed to squeeze through the door to see the replay of Ray Houghton putting the ball in the English net in Stuttgart.
Victory was one thing, but beating England conferred a kind of national sainthood on the bluff Englishman who orchestrated it.
And afterwards Ray “the little Scot’’ spoke of the build-up to a victory. “They even played Irish music on the bus going to the match,” he said in wonder. Jack Charlton’s Irish team were not a band of football mercenaries as some commentators tried to portray them, but many of them had never set foot in their adopted country before putting on the green jersey.
But none of that mattered. Jack exploited the granny and granddad rule to the nth degree and when he gathered them together they played their hearts out for the land of their ancestors.
And of course never had Ireland produced such home grown talent too: David O’Leary, Paul McGrath, Kevin Moran, Kevin Sheedy, Packie Bonner, Ronnie Whelan, Roy Keane.
With Jack we always went as far as we could and so there were no regrets, even when Toto Schillaci put two goals in the Irish net and ended our Italia ‘90 dreams.
Of course people cried, but we snatched another celebration from the jaws of glorious defeat.
As a reporter I remember the terrifying bus journey down O’Connell Street towards College Green for the team’s victory celebration. The surging crowds, the pandemonium and the frightening intensity of the fans left me drained — I don’t know what it must have been like for the team!
And there was the controversy. Like Dev and Collins, or Haughey and FitzGerald, you eventually had to choose which side you were on: Charlton or Dunphy.
I worked with Eamon Dunphy in the Sunday Independent at the time. Even with the passing of years, I still regard him as one of the greatest commentators of that era, in sport and other aspects of Irish life. His bravery for going against the consensus and passionately sticking with his point of view was awesome.
After an initial honeymoon period, he divided public opinion by maintaining that Jack Charlton had imposed a system on the Irish soccer team that resulted in an unattractive version of the “beautiful game”. The Irish players were better than that, he argued, they had the talent to win matches on merit rather than getting there by shutting down the opposition and hoping for a lucky goal from a long ball.
He also believed that if you didn’t play by Jack’s rules you were frozen out.
To be honest, I didn’t know enough about the game to come down on either side. Like many others I just went along for the ride — and what a ride. Those glorious afternoons and nights in packed pub, the triumphs and the emotional highs and camaraderie it spawned among real fans and mere fellow-travellers like myself.
It didn’t quite end the day Ireland ground out a 0-0 draw with Egypt in the 1990 World Cup, but certainly the romance died for me that day. When Dunphy fired his pencil at the desk in frustration at “that rubbish”, even the unflappable Bill O’Herlihy, recoiled.
Every phone in the empty newsroom of the Sunday Independent (most of the staff were out in the pub watching the match) rang in unison. People were so angry with Dunphy and wanted to vent it. When you told them to ring RTE, they told you they’d already tried, but couldn’t get through.
Dunphy’s refusal to join the party boiled over and he became a figure of hatred and at times he and his family were the victim of threats and intimidation.
But for many people that was just an aside to the main attraction of the Irish team and its romantic journey from no-hopers to the top flight.
Charlton made it to three major finals when Ireland qualified for USA ‘94. On a Saturday night in New Jersey, Ireland exacted revenge on Italy, when a first half goal by Ray Houghton reversed the result and we eventually reached the knockout stages of the World Cup for the second time in a row.
After a decade in charge of Ireland the profile of the country and the Irish supporter had changed. The raggle-taggle army of supporters from the late 80s changed as money poured into the game and soccer became the sporting face of the Celtic Tiger, with multi-million sponsorship deals and corporate insistence on success.
Jack himself was semi-reluctantly squeezed out in 1996 and the accolades of Irish citizenship and other honours replaced the once rapturous applause from the terraces.
It was his last job in football and while the dream didn’t die with his demise as Irish manager, it’s never been the same since.
‘You had to choose which side you were on: Charlton or Dunphy’
JACK Charlton’s importance to the Irish people went beyond football. He lifted the pride of the whole nation at a time when it had been mired in a gloomy economic recession.
The life-size statue of him at Cork Airport with a salmon in his hands shows how warmly the former manager of the Irish team was regarded.
We took him to our hearts and even honoured his fishing hobby. He was a household name and could not walk down any Irish street without being stopped over and over again for autographs.
Charlton could have been a miner instead of a footballer. He was born on May 8, 1935 in Ashington, Northumberland, the eldest of four boys.
His father Bob was a miner. Charlton’s footballing skills came from his mother Cissie’s side of the family — her cousin was Jackie Milburn, the celebrated Newcastle striker who won 13 caps for England. She also had four brothers who were professional footballers and was an avid football fan herself.
Young Jack was always up to some money-making scheme — delivering newspapers, selling chopped wood, making pig swill and selling fish he had caught.
He was, he later said, “always getting into scrapes. I was the best fighter in the street”. “Jack,” his mother confirmed, “was full of devilment.”
He was educated at Hirst North Primary School but, unlike his brother Bobby, did not prosper academically.
Where Bobby won a place at Bedlington Grammar School, Jack failed his 11-plus and went on to Hirst Park secondary modern.
On the pitch, he was already being wholly outshone by his younger brother, who played for England schoolboys and was courted by a host of clubs.
Jack was not even in the frame for his county side, let alone his country. Rather it was his size, strength, and family ties to the club that tempted a Leeds scout to approach him after a game for Ashington YMCA.
But, warned off by Cissie, who did not think him good enough to become a professional, Jack turned the offer of a trial at Elland Road down. Instead, as his school career ended, aged 15 he headed for the pits, working in Linton Colliery with his dad.
Initially his work kept him above ground, but as soon as he was sent into the mine itself, he realised that it was not the job for him. After a single day underground, he resigned. “I’ve seen it, I’ve done, I’ve had enough,” he told his colliery manager. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, but it won’t be that.”
He was on the point of joining the police when another offer of a trial arrived from Leeds. Three of his uncles had played for the club, and one was still in the squad.
His first manager was Major Frank Buckley, notorious for his foul-mouthed tirades.
Leeds were then in the Second Division and, as a 16-year-old in the third team, Jack played in the Yorkshire League, often against miners whose tackling was fearsome. This toughening regime, he would later say, was the making of him.
The day after his 17 th birthday, he was offered a contract, £14 a week plus a £10 signing-on fee. He played his first game for the first team on April 24, 1953, against Doncaster Rovers.
He went on to make a club record 773 appearances for Leeds, most of them under legendary manager Don Revie, and scored 96 goals.
His club honours included a Second Division title, First Division title, FA Cup winner, League Cup winner, Charity Shield winner and two Inter Cities Fairs Cup winners.
In 1965, just days before
Jack’s 30th birthday, Leeds beat Manchester United in the semi-final of the FA Cup, and after the game the news came through that Alf Ramsey had picked him for the England squad.
According to Leo McKinstry, in his book Jack and Bobby, Jack was unable to restrain himself from running into the dejected Manchester United dressing room to give the glad tidings to his brother. “That’s terrific,” Bobby said, before another United player added: “Now f**k off out of here.”
“That’s the kind of tact I’m famous for,” noted Jack, who went on to score six goals for England in 35 matches.
Jack and Bobby were part of the England team that won the 1966 World Cup, and Jack bought his parents a house with his £1,000 winnings.
He later admitted he had a strained relationship with Bobby and wrote in his autobiography that he felt Bobby began to drift from the Charlton family after his marriage to Norma, who did not get along with their mother.
Last year he said their relationship was “Okay like. If he’s up at a game in Newcastle, I go to meet him and we chat about family things. Neither of us is getting any younger”.
When Charlton retired from playing, he managed Middlesbrough where he won the manager of the year award in his first season.
Next he managed Sheffield Wednesday and then Newcastle United before being asked by the FAI in 1986 to become the first non-Irishman to take over the Irish team.
Ireland had never even qualified for a major tournament before he took over. When the team finally did so, at the 1988 European Championship in West Germany, their first match was against England. In the first of many giant-killing acts to come, Ray Houghton’s looping headed goal ensured that Ireland won 1-0.
At the celebration that followed, a crooning Liam Brady swayed up on to a chair with a guitar he was unable to play. “Irish” Jack had helped to condemn the nation with which he won the World Cup to an ignominious exit.
Ireland qualified for the World Cup finals in 1990, in Italy, where they reached the quarter-finals. Four years later, the team qualified for the World Cup again, this time in the US.
“We trained hard and we played hard but if the lads wanted to go for a pint and relax, I made time for that too,” Jack said of his management style.
He knew when he took over the job that Ireland were unlikely to beat the best teams in the world, “so we invented a game that was totally different to everything world football had seen before.
“They’ve given it a fancy name because they don’t want to tell us that we started it but we did. They might call it ‘pressing’. We called it ‘put people under pressure’,” he said.
His break with the Irish team in 1996 came as a shock to the nation.
“I didn’t retire, I got sacked, really,” he said. “I went to a meeting and was told that they didn’t want me any more. I thought they might give me more time to make up my mind.
“I just went to a meeting as a manager and came out of it and I wasn’t the manager.
“They voted me out and I wasn’t happy about that. I thought it was all a bit tough, when you think about what we’d achieved.”
He decided to retire from football management but continued to give after-dinner speeches, “just telling the stories”.
Throughout his career, Charlton received many honours, including being named the Football Writers’ Association’s footballer of the year in 1967 and being awarded an OBE from Queen Elizabeth in 1974.
He was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and made a Freeman of Leeds in 2009.
But it was in Ireland that he was showered with praise for his outstanding work with the Irish team. When he retired, he was granted honorary Irish citizenship — the highest award the State can give.
Two years earlier he had been made a Freeman of the City of Dublin and given an honorary doctorate by the University of Limerick.
A stained glass pane with the initials ‘JC’ hangs over his fireplace. It was given to him by friends at the Hill 16 pub in Dublin.
During a visit to Dublin in June 2015 with his wife Pat for the opening of the Jack Charlton suite at the new Aviva Stadium, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. He said the experience was “overwhelming”.
In recent years, his health deteriorated and when he developed problems with his balance, he was told he had to stop driving.
He still attended events but was no longer able to stand and speak to the crowd.
His passion for fishing was also affected as he could no longer enjoy the sport alone.
Charlton is survived by his wife Pat (whom he married in 1958), his three children John, Deborah and Peter, and his grandchildren.
“They’ve given it a fancy name because they don’t want to tell us that we started it”