Jack Charlton 1935-2020
He brought unimagined joy to many, many lives. Happiness is his legacy
READ SHANE McGRATH, PHILIP QUINN AND JACK’S BIOGRAPHER PETER BYRNE
JACK Charlton was a contradiction in terms. He was a tall, gruff-looking man and yet when you got to know him, he was the most sensitive of people. He adored children. If he was walking down the street and saw a woman with a pram on the opposite side of the road he would cross over to meet them.
I remember on Charlton’s birthday last year, I put my grandson Tomás on to him during our phone call to wish him a happy birthday and Tomás said to Jack: ‘We all sing songs about you when we go to the Aviva for big matches.’
Charlton asked: ‘What kind of songs’. Tomás sang out to him: ‘We’re all part of Jackie’s army, we’re all off to Italy...’ at that stage Jack handed the phone back to his wife, Pat and Tomás handed the phone back to me.
Pat asked: ‘What was that all about?’ I explained Tomás was singing a song to him.
She said: ‘It must have been a great song, he was very emotional when he gave me the phone, and there were tears in his eyes.’
I first met Charlton at the funeral of a colleague of mine in the late 1960s, a sports editor called Bob Williams. Bob would cover Leeds United matches, I went over to the funeral in Manchester and Jack was there, along with the whole squad.
We got on well and when he came to Ireland I was the one guy he recognised and we became very close. I wrote his biography with him and he became very trusting of me.
He was born in Geordieland in Ashington, May 8, 1935 but people in the northeast would have more in common with Irish people than they would with the southeast of England. This was partly why he was such a perfect fit here.
I remember asking him about his introduction to Ireland, which happened while he was playing with Leeds United in the early ’70s in a friendly game against Waterford.
Charlton had never been in Ireland before and, for some reason, they flew from Leeds to Cork and there was a fleet of cars waiting to ferry them up to Waterford. The driver of Charlton’s car was fond of the ‘odd tipple’, so they hadn’t gone far before they stopped at a pub.
They went in and had a few scoops.
Overall, they stopped at five pubs on the way to Waterford and this amazed him. He couldn’t get over the Irish, and he loved that they didn’t take themselves too seriously, particularly when it came to football.
Thus began his love affair with Ireland and when the managerial job became vacant in 1986, he was delighted. Not everyone appreciated the idea of an Englishman coming to manage the national team but the appointment was inspired.
There were four guys in contention for the job, Bob Paisley, the Liverpool manager, being the favourite. Paisley got nine votes on the first count and the other three, Jack Charlton, Liam Tuohy and John Giles, got three each.
There had to be a second count and the people who voted for Giles and Tuohy gave their votes to Charlton, which brought it up to nine/eight but, strangely, one of the voters for Paisley, either by accident or design voted for Charlton. So, he ended up with 10 votes. That’s how he got in and his effect was instantaneous.
Not only did he value the players, he really appreciated the fans. He couldn’t believe how disciplined the Irish supporters were compared to everybody else.
He picked out four or five players he knew well and he put them in charge of the rest. He gave them a sense of pride in their country and, if anyone got out of hand, they were taken to the side and told they were letting the team down.
If there was ever an away game, two nights before the match he would always go out in the city with his assistant, Maurice Setters, and they’d seek out where the supporters were to have a few jars with them. The big wins with the Irish
‘He would seek out where the supporters were’
team like Euro 88 and the World Cup qualifiers were so important to Charlton, but it was the tough road that got him to managing the Irish team that made him so determined to be successful.
He was invited by the English FA in 1977 to replace Don Revie as manager of England’s national team but, shockingly, not only did he not get the job, he never got a reply. That, in turn, provided him with all the motivation he needed to be a success with the Irish team.
No matter where you walked with Charlton in Ireland, every second person would stop and talk to him.
He always had time to recognise them. He was more at home here than anywhere else and he really became more Irish than English.
Charlton’s input in the mid-1990s was huge, when we come to assess the important people in the country of the late 20th century, Charlton’s name has to loom large.
He really was a marvellous ambassador.