JACK GAVE US THE GIFT OF HAPPINESS
Charlton’s sides made Ireland meaningful abroad and captured the passion of our people
THERE were penalties and there were saves. There was Stuttgart and New York, rows with journalists and fishing trips to the west, and leading an Irish team to places and results that seemed impossible then and are scarcely believable now.
And the result of it all was happiness.
That was what Jack Charlton brought to Ireland.
It was as simple, as sweet and as precious as that.
The statue of Bill Shankly outside Anfield has a plain, beautiful inscription. It reads, ‘He made the people happy’.
Imagine that as a legacy.
The family of Jack Charlton mourn him this morning, and they should find solace in the tributes that sluiced through Irish and English reaction to his death.
That one, priceless truth should console them more than any other: he made the people, these people, our people, happy.
Crediting Italia ’90 with inspiring the Celtic Tiger was an old theory reupholstered for use yesterday, and perhaps there is some sliver of sense in it, somewhere.
There was certainly a social consequence to the deeds of the national team under Charlton’s management, but happiness was the enduring dividend.
It is too easy to set the effects of the Irish team against the Ireland of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and come up with a light in the darkness motif.
That was a contrast that worked for Roddy Doyle, but it is trite to depict the place as a grey, miserable rock in those years.
The country was no dreamscape; immigration was high and the scandals that would convulse the political and religious realms were still years away from exposure.
And it would be another decade before the world began to shrink due to modern communications. That is partly why Euro ’88 and Italia ’90 were so thrilling. There was the fact that an Irish team was doing well, but there was also the fact that this was happening on a global stage.
Gaelic games was then, as it is now, the dominant sporting passion on the island, but it offered no international dimension.
The Olympics occasionally did, through the deeds of John Treacy or Michael Carruth, but the rugby and soccer sides were traditionally also-rans.
Charlton changed that, and making Ireland noticed by others was an important part of his effect.
Getting soccer played in large parts of the country was another. Mayo may be known for the passion of its football fans, but when Charlton had a holiday home in Ballina, he was celebrated like an All-Ireland winner.
His popularity gave rise to the story about him paying for everything by cheque, knowing that they would never be cashed but would, instead, end up framed behind the counter wherever he used them.
The Irish team had gathered up its share of hard luck stories by the time he was appointed, but their misfortunes were not a sorrowful mystery that consumed the country.
Charlton’s first game in charge brought 15,000 to Lansdowne Road for a friendly game against Wales.
Within two years, though, he had engineered a team that were now vital to the national mood, and to the interests of millions, many of whose lives had been spent to that point without any intrusion by soccer.
Charlton’s sides made Ireland meaningful abroad, and captured the passion of a people whose enjoyment of Irish success internationally had theretofore been confined to Johnny Logan in the Eurovision Song
Contest.
These new supporters didn’t care about the tactics he used. Deploying a rudimentary style in a team with talents like Ronnie Whelan, Paul McGrath and John Aldridge horrified Charlton’s critics, but put ’em under pressure became a sort of national creed.
It helped that his most famous victory came against England. Ireland in 1990 was still eight years away from the Good Friday Agreement. Terrorists were killing in the name of Ireland, and nationalist communities were suffering their own horrors because of loyalist thugs. Irish-English relations were at times fraught and remained regularly problematic.
When Ray
Houghton put the ball in the English net, the Guildford Four were still over a year away from release, and the Birmingham Six would still be in prison nine months after Italia ’90 ended.
Anti-Englishness was not rife in Irish life, but beating England in the European Championships was a momentous occasion in this country.
And yet Ireland were inspired to do it by an Englishman, a World Cup winner and a member of one of England’s most loved sporting families.
Jack Charlton did not eradicate unreasonable attitudes towards England, but to have such a famous Englishman inspire one of the
greatest days in modern Irish history was significant.
His impact made us reconsider old attitudes, and not just because of his own story. Charlton’s enthusiastic pursuit of second and thirdgeneration Irish players was controversial but, inadvertently, made the consequences of immigration something to consider.
‘Plastic Paddy’ was an insult easily flung about, but other aspects of Irish culture leaned on the diaspora. GAA clubs in America, for instance, were a lucrative destination for players, while Irish music and dancing thrived in emigrant communities in Britain and North America.
Tourism lived for planes crossing the Atlantic full of visitors in search of their roots. Charlton’s approach to player recruitment was merely an extension of this, one more Irish industry taking advantage of our long, painful history of immigration.
Pragmatism was, undoubtedly, more of a motivation for some players than any deeply-felt bonds with the old country, but the fact they became part of the most effective Irish team ever – and in some cases, they were vital components – challenged the notion that they were mercenaries after easy caps.
This success in turn undermined the contention that players needed to be born here to excel in an Irish shirt, that immersion in the Irish language and a working knowledge of our roster of ill-starred patriots was required if a man was to fill the sacred jersey. It was easier for an outsider to see the value of British-born players, and to introduce them in the numbers that Charlton did.
He did not stagger under the weight of Ireland’s complex, too often uneasy, relationship with its bigger neighbour, and never gave a sign of caring much about it.
That brought a freedom to do what he wanted in pursuit of success, and he did.
His place in the affections of Irish people was secured long before he retired in 1995, but the passage of 25 years has sharpened the nature of what he achieved.
He was helped by a generation of major talents, and the past quarter of a century has seen opportunities for British and Irish players at England’s leading clubs squeezed by their ability to bring in talents from all over the world.
That has made the job of the managers who succeeded him very difficult.
It means that his status as the greatest manager in Irish soccer history will probably go unchallenged for years to come.
But that doesn’t do full service to what he did for this country. Ireland was brought together on those unforgettable summer afternoons and evenings in 1988, 1990 and 1994, and on the dreary spring and autumn qualifying days when the country crowded around TV screens willing on these newly cast heroes and the big, brusque character in charge of them.
The point of it all was not the Celtic Tiger or a stiffened sense of national identity.
It was happiness.
This new passion for soccer swept up everyone in its path, and the big, sunlit summer tournaments that used to be exotic distractions were now dramas with Irishmen filling some of the best roles.
And to the side, Jack Charlton directed it all.
He designed a plain, highly effective plan and it brought unimagined joy to many, many lives.
Happiness is his legacy.
HIS IMPACT MADE US CONSIDER OUR OLD ATTITUDES