B75: Jack Charlton

 The recent documentary ‘Finding Jack Charlton’ was really a fine, sad thing. Spanning his career as both player and manager, then his last years living with dementia, it covered a lot of profound themes in a short time, and with a light touch – of loss, of brotherhood, of nationality and belonging, of success, leadership, friendship, aging, glory.

It was well known that the two Charlton brothers had a fraught relationship, but I suppose one hoped or assumed there’d be a reconciliation. It seems unlikely such a reconciliation took place.

Bobby Charlton (our kid, our Bobby, Bobby, Robert, Bobby Charlton, my brother … as Jack variously calls him) was the first extremely famous person I ever met. Somewhere lost in my shed, I have a polaroid of myself with him in 1987. I’m standing on a chair. I queued up with lots of other children at a Sport Aid event. I knew who he was, but I don’t think I fully grasped that he was just about the most globally famous Englishman going. I think I remember him being very nice. The documentary makes clear, and his manner has always suggested, he is a naturally shy person, unlike Jack.

I think, when Northern Ireland but not Ireland were in the 1986 World Cup, I asked and was told that they didn’t really play football in the Republic. That was probably my dad who told me that, a hurling/gaelic football/then rugby man, but there was a nudge of truth to it. They’d never been in a major tournament.

What Jack Charlton did as Ireland manager was an extraordinary effective symbolic thing – bringing the diaspora home. A London kid like me was proud to be Irish as half the team (infinitely more so than Tony Cascarino, after all!). You wouldn’t necessarily say he was an alchemist, as such. Certainly the recruitment was a marvel, but, gosh, when you look at what he assembled, there were some fine, fine players.

You’d pretty much hope a team like that could reach the latter stages of major tournaments – Sheedy, Whelan, Brady, Lawrenson, Quinn, Stapleton, Moran, O’Leary, McCarthy, McGrath, Houghton, Staunton, Aldridge, Hughton, Townsend, Irwin, Keane, Bonner, Kelly, Babb, McAteer … those were mostly big players for big teams, not some rag-tag assortment. 

Still, I suppose the whole thing perpetuated itself. There was so much love towards Charlton from his former players, even those he’d treated a bit harshly.

The relationship with Paul McGrath (the first PFA Player of the Year in the Premier League era) in particular is one of the most memorable and moving things you’ll ever see.

Worth a watch.