Football News: Legends of the Game Part 5: Jack Charlton, Irish Saviour? page 2

Image from: freelargeimages.com

Article page 2 of 3


"I said to Alf that at age 34 I felt I should retire from the England scene. Without pausing he said, 'I totally agree!'" - Jack Charlton



Jack Charlton, unlike little brother Bobby, was a latecomer to the international scene, though Don Revie had predicted he would be an England player if he sorted his head out. Jack's debut was made at Wembley, against the 'Auld Enemy' Scotland on 10th April 1965, just under a month before his 30th birthday. While Jack never felt that Alf Ramsey liked him, Jack was pretty much a settled fixture in the team for the next few seasons. At the end of the 1965/66 season, Jack was included in the World Cup squad as it went on a pre-tournament trip to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. England won all 3 games and Jack scored his first England goal in the victory over Denmark.



He was an ever-present in the 1966 World Cup, where he claims the most difficult game was the semi-final against Portugal and Eusebio, but not because of Eusebio. Charlton was worried about their big centre forward called Torres because he was so strong in the air and he knew he would be in for a battle. At 2-0 up, England were cruising when Torres, who had given Jack a torrid time all game, chipped the ball over Gordon Banks, but Jack was there to stop it, unfortunately he had to use his hand and gave away a penalty. Eusebio converted the spot-kick, but England were able to hold on to the win. Jack said: "At the end I was in tears as I hugged our kid. We were through to the final."



Confidence was flowing through Jack, as he felt sure they could beat the Germans, so it was a blow when they opened the scoring. "I remember standing there," Jack said, "and, as the ball came past me, I could have stuck a foot out and stopped it. But it looked as if it was going straight to Banksy. Now normally I had a very good understanding with Gordon, but, as it happened, it sort of sneaked in, between me and him. Maybe he thought I was going to stop it, I don't know. Afterwards I always felt I should have stopped it. But, when you're centre back, you let lots of balls go which you could stop because you know your goalkeeper's got it covered. Only this time he hadn't."



England quickly equalised and then took the lead when Martin Peters nipped in ahead of Jack to put the ball in the net. Pragmatism kicked in then and England tried to run the clock down, as there were just ten minutes left. With just seconds left on the clock, Jack gave away a free kick just outside the box, which was forced home by Wolfgang Weber after a penalty box scramble, forcing the game into extra time. Hurst's disputed third and the 'they think it's all over' goal in the dying seconds won England their first and, so far at least, only World Cup. "The final whistle went just after Geoff's goal, the game was over, and Geoff stood there with his hands in the air," Jack recalls. "I ran the whole length of the field just to get hold of him, but, as I came near him, he ran off and I was too knackered to to follow. I flopped to my knees, totally exhausted, and my head fell forwards onto my hands."



When Don Revie walked into his office the next time after the final, he found Jack's medal sat on his desk with a note that read: "That's for you Boss." Jack's World Cup winnings were spent on a new house for his parents in Ashington.



His England career was short, four years later he was in the England squad which went to Mexico, but only played once in a meaningless group game against Czechoslovakia, his last ever cap, as Brian Labone replaced him. Jack won 35 caps, scored 6 goals and played in two World Cups and one European Championship. The World Cup was not his only trophy, he also won four British Home Championship tournaments in his four years with the squad.



"You can't give players too much information....you've got to practice things until they become automatic in your game....As long as everybody has one thing to do in their game and know what it is, there's no confusion. But, once you make it two things....now you're causing confusion." - Jack Charlton



There was just one thing left for Jack to do, now he was retired from playing and was about to embark on pastures new, he had a group of Leeds United shops that needed to be sold to the club. He and Pat had started off originally with just a shed with a drop down window, and grew it into three shops, which the club had wanted to take off them. However Don Revie had blocked the club from doing so, telling the club they were Jack's. When Jack retired from playing a deal was agreed to sell them to the club, who had never been able to make a club shop work in the past.



There was a lot of interest in Charlton's services, a number of intermediaries called him to ask him about his plans, but nothing definite came up until a direct inquiry from the England team doctor, who also happened to be a director of Middlesbrough. Previous manager Stan Anderson had just quit and Boro chairman Charlie Aymer wanted to know if Jack would be interested in replacing him. Despite being outside the top flight for the last twenty years, Jack thought they were essentially a big club with a good, if a "little shabby" infrastructure. He also saw a big catchment area giving the club potential for the long term, so he went along to see them play and was fairly impressed with what he saw.



"So I agreed to go and meet the board," Jack said. "They sat me in an annex, and then the members went into the boardroom. After a while they called me in. I sat down, and they started asking me questions, like in an interview. 'Wait a minute,' I said, 'I didn't come here to be interviewed for the job, I came here because I was told that you wanted me to manage the club, and that the job was mine if I wanted it.'" Jack then handed them a sheet of paper which Don Revie had given him, that listed a manager's responsibilities. Basically it said that the manager had a say in everything. Charlton left the piece of paper with them and went back outside to wait for their answer. Fifteen minutes later he was the Boro manager.



Jack was lucky enough to sit next to legendary Celtic manager Jock Stein at the Football Writers' Dinner, where he got some advice ahead of his first season. Stein told him to take the team away as soon as possible to find out who he could trust and who he would be unable to trust. Something Jack did, and earmarked a few players he needed to get rid of. Stein also offered him Bobby Murdoch on a free, which is an offer Jack took up. He also tried to sign Nobby Stiles to play a holding role in midfield, but Stiles told him that he had already agreed to join Preston North End to play for Jack's little brother Bobby who had retired as well.



At the time Graeme Souness was a youngster in Boro's reserves and told Jack he should be in the first team. Jack told him: "Look, you've got the talent but I have seen hundreds of players like you in the history of football that have had talent and have not used it and wasted it. There are two doors for you. There is one you can walk out of to use your talent, make something of yourself and perhaps be a player one day. The other one is to throw it all away."



Souness was not the only Boro youngster that remembers Jack well, Chris Morris, who later played under Jack with the Republic of Ireland, was told by Jack: "Well, I've seen you play twice and you were bloody crap both times. But the coaches say you've done a bit better than that so we're going to offer you a 1 year contract and your pay is going to go from £80 a week to £95." Morris saw him as a domineering, larger than life tough character, though Morris believes Charlton's thoughtfulness made him seem surly if you did not know him well.



David Hodgson remembers Jack playing in a 5-a-side match with the team while TV cameras were at the training ground. John Craggs put him on his backside with a tackle and Jack, incensed, jumped up and chased Craggs around, shouting and screaming at him, for what felt like twenty minutes. The temper was still there!



Whatever it was that Jack was doing, it worked, though it took until Christmas to get the tactics sorted, once that happened they flew up the division and ran away with it. On Bobby Moore's debut for Fulham, in March, they thrashed them 4-0 and secured promotion to the top flight with seven games left to go. They ended up winning Division 2 by 15 points, in a two points for a win era. The feat won Jack the Manager of the Year title, the first manager outside of the top flight to win it. He was also given an OBE for services to football.



Middlesbrough went top of Division 1 after 12 games but ended the 1974/75 season in 5th. Despite holding onto their top flight status for another season in and then starting 1976/77 well, topping the table in October, Jack was concerned by the lack of fan support for the side. As we still see today, they struggled to fill their stadium and get the gates that their two rivals in the region manage to attract. The team fell away once more, sitting in mid-table in April when Jack commented, "we are on the crest of a slump." A few days later, on 21st April 1977 Jack quit as boss of Middlesbrough.



"Would he survive today? No, because players do not like being told the truth. You have to pussyfoot around them today and that was not Jack's style. Jack believed if there was something to be said....he said it, and he wasn't bothered if you didn't like what he was saying. My head was up my own backside....If I had met a less demanding manager, who was not as confrontational and aggressive, I might have drifted even more." - Graeme Souness



Following his resignation from the Boro job, Jack was invited to apply for the role of England manager, following Don Revie's acrimonious and controversial departure from the job. Despite having been invited to apply, the bad taste left behind by Revie and the close connection between the pair meant that he was not even given the courtesy of an interview. That was something that rankled him for many years to come.



Instead, Charlton's next stop was Sheffield Wednesday, in October 1977, then in Division Three and struggling badly. Jack brought in old friend Maurice Setters as his assistant manager, Setters was to work with him in all his future jobs. His first season was a difficult one, with survival the aim, and he was looking to improve the team, agreeing the signing of midfielder Brian Hornsby from Shrewsbury Town. Just before the move went through the Owls were set to face Shrewsbury at the Gay Meadow at the end of February 1978, and, midway through his pre-match team talk he turned to Wednesday midfielder Jeff Johnson and said, "you're up against the lad Hornsby, he's a very skilful player.....I'm buying him to replace you."



After keeping Wednesday in the Third Division the first season, Jack secured promotion in the following one. His methods were certainly proving successful, as, despite his forthright comments, Jack built a real togetherness, almost family feeling around the club. Gary Megson remembers him often helping out players who were in financial trouble, though Jack would never ask for the money back afterwards.



When Jack signed Gary Shelton the club put him up in a hotel. Megson and Gary Bannister were in a club house at the time. After training Charlton told Megson and Bannister to take Shelton out for a meal to make him feel welcome. So they arranged to have dinner with him at the hotel. A week later Charlton pulls out a piece of paper & said, "what's this?" It was a copy of the bill for the meal. "I told you to take him out for a meal, not that we were bloody paying for it." He made the pair pay the money back to the club.



It was not all good times at the Owls and he was left hurt and frustrated by a match at Oldham Athletic on 6th September 1980, when Sheffield Wednesday fans rioted after Wednesday striker Terry Curran was sent off following a clash with Simon Stainrod. 20 people were injured, including police officers, as fans hurled bricks, concrete, coins and anything else they could find. The game was stopped on 29 minutes and Jack was brought to tears of frustration after his pleas to the fans to show restraint fell on deaf ears and he was hit by a missile thrown from the crowd.



Jack got Wednesday to within a point of promotion in 1982, but he never managed to take them to the top flight and, unhappy with the way things were at the club, he quit in May 1983. In March 1984 Malcolm Allison was sacked as Boro manager with the team sat in the bottom half of Division Two and Jack was brought in to rescue the club from relegation. He succeeded in his rescue mission and they finished 17th, just one place lower than the previous season under Allison.



It was then that his dream job came along when his second cousin, Jackie Milburn, approached him and asked him to take charge of Newcastle United, Jack's favourite team, in June 1984. As we all would, Jack jumped at the chance to live the dream and was appointed to take over a team that had just been promoted to the top flight, though there was little money to spend. However the squad did contain some quality such as Chris Waddle and Peter Beardsley and, in the youth team, they had a shining star, nicknamed the chubby little chap as he struggled with his weight even then, Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne.



Gazza actually credits Jack with getting him focused on football, at an age when he could have lost his way. When Jack first took charge he told Gascoigne outright that he was too fat, even patting him disdainfully on the belly, and that he would be dropped from the youth team. Jack told him: "I'm giving you two weeks, if you've not made it by then, I'll show you the door." Gascoigne spent the next ten days running in a black plastic bin liner after training. He not only earned a return to the youth team but went on and took the captaincy.



Jack showed his eccentricities at times while in charge at Newcastle. His fourth game in charge was a midweek trip to face Arsenal, then at Highbury, with Newcastle top of the league at the time. Arsenal battered them 4-1 and next up was a trip to Old Trafford on Saturday to play Manchester United. As they were leaving Highbury Jack said to the players "I'll see you at Old Trafford on Saturday lads, I'm off grouse shooting." They didn't see him again until in the dressing room at quarter to 2. He never even went to the pre-match meal.



Waddle said he was not good with names: "Like the day of George Reilly's first game. Jack came into the dressing room on the Friday, as he usually did to name the team. We were all sat round waiting and he goes, 'right ghoulkeeper is the ghoulkeeper. Right back is the big laird, two centre backs....the big laird and the big laird, left back (which was Kenny Wharton) the little laird. Right wing (me)....the big laird, centre mids...the two big lairds, left wide (Peter Beardsley) the little laird, up front....the big laird and ....' And he started to click his fingers as he looked at George Reilly. And he said,'....and up front....erm....erm....erm....what's your name son?' Still clicking his fingers. George Reilly looked at the rest of us as if to say, 'is he serious?' And then he said, 'you signed me yesterday from Watford for £200,000....I'm George Reilly.' And Jack said, 'aaaaah is that your name? I always knew George Reilly as the big laird.'"



Jack and assistant manager Maurice Setters travelled with the youth team down to Vicarage Road, to face Watford. On the way down Jack promised the team a steak dinner if they won. They won 4-1 with Gascoigne man of the match and, on the way home Jack took them to Burger King at the services, in lieu of a steak dinner. Charlton also offered Gazza a new contract on the trip home with a pay rise which saw his salary go from £25 per week up to £120 a week plus a further £120 for each first team appearance he made. Along with the new deal Jack promised to take Gascoigne fishing. Gazza went out and spent his entire first £120 pay packet on top of the line fishing kit before joining Jack on the riverbank for a day's fishing. Jack took one look at the new kit and threw the lot in the river! Gascoigne recalled: "He took out a can of Guinness, poured it into the water and all the fish came."



Newcastle stayed up under Jack, but the fans were unhappy with the style of play and wanted a change of manager. During the following pre-season, in August 1985, Newcastle faced Sheffield United in a friendly. The match was marred by protests by the fans and calls for his resignation. Jack obliged the fans and resigned as Newcastle manager to head into semi-retirement. It was back to fishing and shooting for Jack.

→

Legends of the Game Part 5: Jack Charlton, Irish Saviour? page 3

Written by Ed001 - August 23 2018 11:48:54