ENGLAND’S COLOSSUS WITH A HEART OF GOLD
JEFF POWELL’S TRIBUTE TO JACK CHARLTON
ON THE morning after he watched his brother Bobby unveil the statue of Bobby Moore which stands guard at the portals to the new Wembley stadium, Jack Charlton returned alone to the spiritual home of English football. Big Jack rose early in his west London hotel room, checked his bag with the hall porter and took the Underground on his sentimental journey.
A slow, reflective stroll from the station along a virtually deserted Wembley Way ended with him doffing his trademark cloth cap to the friend who had captained himself, his younger brother and the rest of the boys of the summer of 1966 to England’s only World Cup glory.
There he stood for half an hour or more. Hand pressed against the plinth. Lost not only in thought but conversation. ‘I needed to have a chat with Sir Robert,’ he explained. ‘I miss him. I think about him most days since he passed on.’
Moore had died 14 years earlier, in 1993, a victim of bowel cancer. Charlton, his partner at the heart of the defence, added: ‘We didn’t see each other a lot, but whenever we did we just picked up and nattered away like in the dressing rooms, the hotels, the training grounds, the dinners, the reunions and all that. Aye, and all the bloody funerals.’
It adds an extra dimension of sadness to the loss of Charlton, at 85, that his burial service will have to take place under the Covid-19 restrictions on public gatherings.
It was at a funeral that he told me the story of his solitary sojourn, saying: ‘I’d been missing my chats with Mooro. I went back to see him so we could spend some time on our own. We talked about the good old days. of friends and laughs and good times.
‘About football then and now. About what’s gone wrong with England for nigh-on half a century since. And I can tell you he’s not impressed with that. Me neither.’
This is a sentimental tale which sheds some light on the blunt but beloved, frank but disarming, engaging but demanding, honest but caring paradox of a character as legendary for the natural warmth of his company as for his uncompromising football.
Beneath that towering determination to win as a player — tempered in the scorching furnace of Don Revie’s Leeds United and that great team’s devouring hunger for success — beat a heart of gold.
Behind the relentless long-ball power game with which his management dragged the Republic of Ireland from nowhere to unprecedented achievement — a World Cup quarter-final included — lived a romantic soul whose bear-hug buried your face in his chest.
That beguiling concoction transported this English patriot into such a darling of the Emerald Isle that they conferred honorary citizenship and granted him the Freedom of Dublin’s fair city. ‘Is that free Guinness for life?’ he asked. only half joking.
When I rang him at Ireland’s team hotel in Rome on the morning of their Italia ’90 quarter-final against Italy to wish him luck, he said: ‘Well, thank you for that but I know you don’t much like the way we play.’ Then, after a pregnant pause, he chuckled and added. ‘Don’t worry, bonny lad. I also know you mean it.’ So I did. Just as I was sorry when they lost to the host nation. Though that 1-0 defeat did nothing to impair the reverence in which he is held in Ireland. Nor tarnish the legacy of his 23 trophyladen years with Leeds. Least of all dull the memory of that sun-blessed afternoon at Wembley.
So on his visit to the statue, did he and Moore talk about the greatest day in English sporting history, the 4-2, two-hour triumph over West Germany climaxed by Geoff Hurst’s World Cup final hat-trick?
‘ Course we did,’ he said. ‘We remembered the only time I ever heard him swear. I made a mistake which led to Germany equalising just before the end of normal time. A hard look from him was always bad enough. That time he told me: “Don’t f***ing do that ever again”.’
THEY
were disparate personalities. After the official victory banquet, Moore hit the West End. Charlton went for a pub booze-up. Yet the bond was strong. Firmer for some years as it would transpire than that between Big Jack and the brilliant younger sibling he called ‘Wor Kid’.
The Charlton boys grew up closer than tinned sardines in Ashington, Northumberland, but family relationships became strained after Bobby married. This had no detrimental effect on their combined exploits for England. Jack ran to embrace Bobby at the end of the World Cup final ‘even though I was completely knackered and kept sinking to my knees’.
While Bobby went from superstardom at Manchester United to a knighted directorship at old Trafford, Jack remained rooted in his North East working-class origins. He could frequently be seen striding across the moors of Northumberland or Yorkshire, cloth cap pulled down against the elements, fishing rod over his shoulder, shotgun under his arm.
Yet when it came to public speaking, Jack proved to be more humorous and entertaining after dinners and on television than his reserved brother. That eloquence helped forge a rapprochement between them in 2008, when the BBC asked him to present their Sports Personality of The Year Lifetime Achievement Award.
In his speech he said this: ‘Bobby could play football and was the great creator. I couldn’t play football but I could stop others playing. Together we proved there is a place for both in this game.’
England manager Sir Alf Ramsey confirmed as much in a team talk as he brought Jack into his preWorld Cup side only days before his 30th birthday. ‘Alf said that he did not necessarily pick the 11 best players in the land,’ said Charlton. ‘He picked those players who could best do a specific job. I knew who he was talking to.’
Big Jack’s dominance in the air and strength on the ground liberated Captain Cool and Bobby Dazzler to conjure up the worldbeating magic. The same service he performed for Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles in the majority of his more than 700 one-club games for Leeds as they ran rampant in the 1960s and 1970s. Now he joins those lost from two distinguished casts of high sporting drama.
Charlton’s memory was never the greatest, especially for names, so when he first became afflicted with dementia it went barely noticed. But there was no overcoming the lymphoma which took him down in the early hours of Saturday, leaving less than half England’s World Cup heroes still standing.
MooRE,
Alan Ball, Ray Wilson, Martin Peters and Gordon Banks preceded him. George Cohen, Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst, Roger Hunt and Wor Kid remain living mementoes of England’s golden moment.
Whenever Big Jack referred to Moore as Sir Robert he was invoking the question as to why the skipper was never knighted, along with Sir Alf, Sir Bobby and Sir Geoff. The vexed issue of posthumous honours will be raised again now, also on his behalf.
Two nations, as well as football at large, looked up to Jack, and not only because he stood 6ft 5½in high. A giraffe in stature, also a giant of a man.
After talking up to Moore’s monument, which is 20-feet high in total, he said: ‘This is the first time he’s been taller than me, but I felt better for our chat.’ So what did Moore say as Charlton took his leave, rode the Tube back to town to pick up his luggage, then boarded the train north?
‘What he always said when anyone asked how he was,’ Big Jack replied. ‘ All is well.’ As it will be once more when they meet again in that celestial saloon.