Jack Charlton got his first job at the age of 15 — as a coalminer, deep underground in Ashington’s colliery in Northumberland. He didn’t stick it for long, particularly when Leeds came calling with the offer of a contract to play football.
He went on to spend the whole of his playing career with Leeds United, making 773 appearances for the club.
His mother, Chrissie, was a cousin of Newcastle United’s great striker, Jackie Milburn, so you could say that football was in the blood of Chrissie’s four sons. Jack was the eldest.
His younger brother, Bobby, also went down the mines three years after Jack. He, too, gave it short shrift — he left to join Leeds’s greatest rival, Manchester United, and became one of the finest players England has ever produced, a powerful, prolific scorer of goals.
In contrast, Jack was a towering, imposing and uncompromising defender. The Charlton brothers were part of the team that in 1966 led England to its only World Cup victory. At the end of the final Jack was seen to sink to his knees. He said later, “I don’t remember if I was saying a prayer, or if I was knackered!”
Jack retired as a player in 1973 and he coached Middlesbrough, Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle. He applied to take charge of England in 1977. They never even replied to him!
But ten years later he transformed Ireland from being one of European’s minnows into a rising power, qualifying for the 1988 European Championship, and for the World Cup in both 1990 in Italy, and 1994 in the USA.
He once said that his team’s strength was “stopping other people playing.”
The Irish people held him in huge affection, and after he retired he was made a Freeman of Dublin.
He and Bobby had a bitter and bad falling out in their middle ages. (It was later sorted out and they got back together again.) I was unaware of the bad blood between them when I met Jack on the first of two occasions. It was at a sports show in Dublin’s RDS, and I was associated with the promotion of a ball-in-a-net training product called Soccer Pal. Bobby was also promoting the same product.
All unaware of their falling out, I casually mentioned to Jack that Bobby, too, was promoting Soccer Pal. Jack astounded me by saying, “I don’t know that man”!
The second photo was taken in the Eyre Square Shopping Centre in Galway when Galway won the F.A.I. Cup for the first and so far only time. We were parading the cup around the centre. As Assistant Manager I had charge of the cup for about six weeks. The great Tommy Keane (R.I.P.) is also in the picture.
I remember telling Jack that I had spent the two weeks leading up to the final coaching the exact move that won the cup.
“No better satisfaction, lad,” he said.
He was then, and for me still is, a soccer hero.
