Jack Charlton - Jack Charlton: The Autobiography

JACK CHARLTON

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

JACK CHARLTON

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

To Don Revie

who changed the direction of my life

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank my wife Pat, whose encouragement in the preparation of this book reflects thirty-eight years of happy married life.

I should also like to thank all the players whove played with me and for me, for making my career in football such a rewarding one.

Finally, I should like to acknowledge the co-operation of Peter Byrne, with whom Ive enjoyed a good working relationship over the years and who supped with me in recording many happy and some not-so-happy moments.

CONTENTS

1 Chalk and Cheese

2 Football in the Blood

3 The Pit and the Pendulum

4 Queen and Country

5 Finding My Feet

6 All for one and one for all

7 Ramseys England

8 30 July 1966

9 The Family

10 Ive got a little list

11 Leeds at the Peak

12 One Book Closes, Another Opens ...

13 England Expects...

14 In the Dugout

15 On the Toon

16 In the Field

17 Across the Water

18 Green Shoots

19 Into the Big Time

20 Onto the World Stage

21 Italia 90

22 Down and Up Again

23 Stepping Westwards

24 Goodbye to All That

Epilogue: Thicker than Water?

Jack Charlton - the Player

Jack Charlton in the Managers Chair

CHALK AND CHEESE

THERES A SAYING IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD THAT IF YOU SHOUT down a pit, up will pop a footballer.

The North-East of England has certainly produced its fair share of footballers. And our family has produced more than its fair share - not only me and my brother Bobby, but also my uncles Jack, George, Jimmy and Stan Milburn, and the most famous of all, my mothers cousin, Jackie Milburn.

I was born on 8 May 1935, in the Northumberland village of Ashington, about eighteen miles due north of Newcastle and two or three miles west of the sea at Newbiggin. Local people used to say that it was the largest coalmining village in the world. If you stood at the top of the main street, you were within easy walking distance of five or six pits. The mines were the only source of jobs in the area. You either worked in the pit or, if you were lucky, you went away to play football. My father worked six days a week down a mine all his life. So, later, did my two younger brothers - and so, nearly, did I.

Ashington stood at the top of the coalfield that stretched south into Durham as far as Middlesbrough. Once you left the pit heaps of Ashington, you were in open countryside and among tiny farming communities which stretched up to the Scottish border to the north, and across to the Cumbrian border to the west. Even as a small boy, I loved to roam this unspoilt country, bird-nesting, ratting, poaching, or just walking in the fields. Often Id be gone for hours.

Charltons have been around here a long time. There were people of that name here back in the Middle Ages, when the area was wild border country dominated by brigands known as reivers. I like to think that some of their fierce independent spirit has passed down to me.

The eldest boys in our family have always been called John, though just like the eldest Milburn, Im invariably known as Jack. The only person who ever called me John was my headmaster. Two years after me my brother Robert was born, who became the man the world knows as Bobby Charlton but I knew as Our Kid. Thats just a common Geordie expression for a younger brother; I always called him Robert or Bob at home, never Bobby. After a break of seven years came another brother, Gordon; and then finally, two years later, the babe of the family, our Tommy. We all look alike, though I am the exception in being much taller than the rest. Being tall in a mining area like ours was fairly unique, and the family thought I must have been a throwback to my great-great-grandfather, who was six foot two.

As Ive said, this part of the world produced its fair share of footballers, and nobody was particularly impressed if a lad went away to play professional football. In fact we never used to say going away to play football, we just used to say going away. The great shame and the great fear for any lad who went away was if you didnt make it in the game, you got sent home.

People in the North-East have a passionate interest in and a great knowledge of football - and my mother Cissie was no exception, coming as she did from a famous footballing family. Strangely enough, my father Bob had no interest in football, but my mother used to take us to football matches from the time when we were nippers. Our Robert, still in his pram when we first started going, would jump with fright at the roar from the crowd whenever a goal was scored.

As Ive said, Cissie Charlton knew her football, and, whats more, she practised it. Manys the summer evening she came out on the street and joined in our games. Football, for her, wasnt just something to be endured by a parent. She genuinely loved the game, and later in life, when wed all left home, she coached the local schools team.

My mother wasnt an excitable person. Other parents might shriek and shout while watching their boys play, but she just stood there, watching and analysing. And we didnt have to tell her whether we played well. She knew her football, and what she had to say about our performances was reasoned and constructive.

As a family, we were never blessed with large amounts of money, but somehow my mother managed to find enough to buy me my first pair of football boots. I was seven at the time, and the war was still on. Cissie read in the local paper that there was a pair of second-hand boots for sale, priced at ten shillings, only fifty pence in todays money but a substantial sum in those days. It must have been near the end of the year, for she said shed buy me the boots as a Christmas present. Armed with a ten-bob note, I set off for the address given in the paper. The woman let me in, and showed me the boots - and when I saw them, my heart nearly stopped. They were Mansfield Hotspurs, the top boot of the time, almost brand new. I remember they had big, hard toes. In my eyes, they were absolutely beautiful - but intuition told me not to let on. I was only seven, but already I knew the way to bargain. I offered her seven shillings. That threw her a bit, but eventually she let me have them for eight. So I strutted back home with the boots under my arm and a grin as wide as the Tyne. Id taken the first step to being a footballer - and whats more, I was able to give my mother back two shillings change.

It isnt easy for kids to appreciate it now, but during the war it was impossible to buy clothes without a coupon, even if you had the money. The school provided you with a football shirt, but the rest was up to you. Many youngsters went without - but not the Charltons. My mother wanted her children to look like footballers, so she knitted us stockings, red and white ones. And shorts? Well, that was a bit of a problem, until Cissie typically came up with the answer. As I mentioned, there was a great big war going on outside, and every household in the country covered the windows with blackout curtains to make life difficult for Hitlers bombers. My mother used some of this curtain material to make shorts for our Robert and me. Equipped with Mansfield Hotspur boots and black shorts that went down to my knees, I felt ready to take on anybody or anything.

You had to improvise in those days. One of the biggest problems for us kids was laying hands on a football. They just werent made at the time, and they couldnt be bought for love nor money. If you were lucky enough to have one from before the war, you were the envy of the neighbourhood, someone who could call the shots when it came to playing and organizing games down in Hirst Park.