Jack Charlton, the Englishman we made our own of. Hundreds of thousands of words have already been written and spoken about the footballing giant since the sad news emerged on Saturday morning. For my part, I still remember (to my shame) supporting Wales against Ireland in that friendly at Lansdowne Road in March 1986, Charlton’s first game in charge. My reasoning was that Wales had Ian Rush playing for them, and he was one of my Liverpool heroes. Rush scored the winning goal after 17 minutes and I cheered on guiltily. But soon after that, my interest in the Republic of Ireland football team started to pick up, thanks to Charlton and the gifted panel he had playing for him. Over the next decade, it felt like many of the key moments of my life were focussed around games involving Jack Charlton’s Irish football team, right up to that final nostalgic night against the Dutch at Anfield (of all places) just a couple of weeks before Christmas 1996, when we all knew that the writing was on the wall and the party was finally over.
Most of what I’ve heard and read over the past 48 hours has come from journalists, former players and pundits. Everyone seems to have a Jack Charlton story and they all give different insights into the man, as a manager, a leader and a person.
And I thought I had heard it all in terms of Jack Charlton stories until I received a late dispatch from Mallorca just this evening, from our Sportyman2020 reporter based there, my brother-in-law Barra O’Brien. Barra passed on to me the story below from his friend Philip Gerard Finnegan and Philip kindly agreed to my posting it on the blog. Unlike the sometimes hackneyed stories of journalists, Philip's story is very special and, like all good true stories, almost difficult to believe.
Philip is a Galway man living in Mallorca. He is a fanatical supporter
of Galway hurling and his native St. Thomas’ club. He is also a lifetime
supporter of Liverpool FC. And tonight he is struggling to watch as his
adoptive club RCD Mallorca are losing to Sevilla and look like they could be
facing relegation to the Spanish Segunda Division.
So thanks to Barra for sourcing this gem of sports writing and thanks to Philip for sharing it, and it’s over
to Philip:
The year was 1997. I spent the summer working in the Killarney
Park Hotel in the beautiful kingdom of County Kerry, a college placement as
part of my Hotel and Catering Management course back in Galway.
I’d spent a couple of days with Arleen in her home town of Fermoy, Co.
Cork and we had to get back to Killarney for work. A bus to Cork and then
another one to Killarney would have taken ages so I suggested we stick out our
thumbs and hitch hike just as I had done all around the country back then.
I was usually lucky at getting lifts and nearly always had a little
adventure or a story to tell afterwards.
The first car that stopped was a local farmer and he wasn’t going so far
but was going towards Mallow, probably only as far as Ballyhooly but we jumped
in anyhow as there’s nothing worse than standing at the side of the road going
nowhere and getting impatient.
It was a balmy warm summers day. The countryside was lush and
green. The farmer dropped us off in the middle of nowhere but the middle of
nowhere was way more satisfying than being stuck at the beginning.
We walked for a few minutes. The road was very windy and not very
wide and we couldn’t find a decent place to perch ourselves in order to safely
stick our thumbs out. The Blackwater river was beside us as we meandered
our way towards Killarney which was at least a good hour, hour and a half
away.
A big mint green saloon car started slowing down. BINGO! On
closer inspection the driver of the Opel Vectra looked more than familiar and
wore a tweed peaked cap. We both jumped in and I looked at the driver
closely... a big lad with a big smile, I then looked at him again as if to say
“I f**king know you” and then looked at him yet again and just had to see if it
was really him and it was...
“JACK”, I exclaimed.
“Yup, it’s me alright. Where are ye going to?” he asked.
“Killarney” said I.
“Perfect” said Jack. “Ye might be able to help me get to Killarney so”.
I looked around at Arleen and she looked back at me as if to say... “who
the f**k is your man” ... but she did say something like... “do you two
know each other?”.
Ireland's favourite Englishman had picked us up. A year prior to
this encounter Jack had stood down as manager of the Republic of Ireland
football team but he was still hugely popular and he was one of our biggest
sporting heroes. He was a household name.
Big Jack pointed to the dashboard. A few letters were on it
addressed to him... Mr. Jack Charlton OBE. He asked me to open his mail
and read them out to him , I gladly obliged. One of the letters contained
all the information of the event was was going to attend in The Great Southern
Hotel where he would be the guest of honour.
The hour or so we spent with big Jack in his Opel was spent chatting
about many different subjects and we hardly even mentioned football though I
was very tempted to start him off on one. He had been fishing in the
Blackwater. It was common knowledge that this man loved his fishing.
He mentioned his wife. Talked about trips to Galway, fishing, how
he wouldn’t have picked Arleen up if she was on her own, the weather...
An absolute gentleman. A sporting legend.
Rest in peace big Jack Charlton and thanks for the lift to Killarney.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam
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