When Charlton went from a Jack to a king
On March 26, 1986, Jack Charlton took charge of an Irish team for the first time, with Wales the visitors to Lansdowne Road for a friendly game. We all know what followed — 10 years of unprecedented success on the pitch, with Ireland qualifying for their first European Championship finals two years later followed by successive appearances at the World Cup finals of 1990 and 1994.
And with it came all the joyful madness of those days of heaven, with the country repeatedly taking leave of its senses, Big Jack himself being elevated to a kind of sainthood and, if you’re to believe more impressionable types, even the first audible roar of the Celtic Tiger (not that we talk about that too much nowadays).
None of which seemed remotely on the agenda as Charlton took his seat in the dugout at Lansdowne for the first time on that Wednesday afternoon. To say the build-up had been ignominious would be an understatement.
For a start, the shenanigans of the FAI’s voting process meant Charlton was less a compromise candidate than an almost accidental one, with FAI president Des Casey having to tell journalists at a press conference announcing the new appointment that he couldn’t be sure the Geordie would actually take the job since the phone kept ringing out (characteristically, Jack had gone fishing). When Charlton finally did appear in person to meet the press, he lost no time in inviting Eamon Dunphy outside for a fight and, within a month, had undermined youth manager Liam Tuohy to such an extent that a revered figure in Irish football promptly stood down from the job, with his back-up team of Brian Kerr and Noel O’Reilly also resigning in protest.
That the new man hadn’t exactly won hearts and minds on the terraces either was evident on matchday at Lansdowne Road when one supporter in a pitiful crowd of 16,500 brandished a banner reading ‘GO HOME UNION JACK’.
Citing ignorance of many of the players at his disposal, Charlton handed over team selection to physio Mick Byrne, which at least gave the new boss a kind of out when Ireland lost 0-1 to an Ian Rush goal. And all this on a pitch in such atrocious condition on the back of three rugby games inside 11 days, it resulted in Wales and Everton keeper Neville Southall being hospitalised with a broken ankle after his foot stuck in a divot.
“Obviously, Jack blamed me for the defeat,” Mick Byrne would later remark. But, at the time, the media seemed to be unanimous in their view that it was the FAI who’d got the selection all wrong. ‘It’s not alright Jack’, was The Irish Press headline. Commenting on “an afternoon of dull mediocrity”, The Irish Times concluded: “One felt like one was watching a Second Division game on a sub-standard pitch. At least Jack Charlton is starting right at the bottom. We really cannot get any worse.”
Nor did they, though a 1-1 draw with their next opponents Uruguay — coincidentally also Ireland’s next opponents after tonight — drew an even smaller crowd of 14,000 to the old place.
But, thereafter, things began to steadily improve and Charlton’s first full campaign would eventually end with the unprecedented triumph of Ireland’s first qualification for one of the two holy grail tournaments, even if it took a huge and unlikely helping hand from Scotland’s Gary Mackay to seal the deal. After that, the country simply succumbed. Stuttgart, Genoa, Giants Stadium... the rest, as they say, is history and hysteria.
Flash forward to the present day and it’s tempting to see the arc of Trapattoni’s regime as Charlton’s in reverse, the Italian having taken over to almost universal popular acclaim but now coming under severe scrutiny as his side has, so far, failed to build on the transient high of that brush with glory in Paris.
It’s certainly the case that Trapattoni didn’t get the luck that night which Jack enjoyed through Gary Mackay’s timely intervention in Sofia back in 1987 but, in truth, the two men are not all that different in terms of their philosophy, particularly when it comes to a seemingly bedrock belief that Ireland can’t beat most opponents at their own game.
Yet for all their similar stubbornness in selection and tactics, it would be hard to argue that the Irish under Trapattoni play a brand of football which is as unsophisticated as the type favoured by Charlton.
However, in the end, as both men would likely to be quick to remind you, it all comes down to results.
If Trapattoni does end up leading Ireland to Poland and the Ukraine — and a win tonight would seem a mandatory step in that direction — be assured that there won’t be too many complaining then about the hows and the whys of history repeating itself.
- Contact: liammackey@hotmail.com
