“Football is quite a boring life if you’re doing it properly”

WHATEVER happened to Johnny Giles? It might seem like a daft question to ask about one of the best-known people in Ireland, a man whose analysis of football, in the press and on television, is seen to carry the clout of papal infallibility, and whose own long and illustrious career as a player and manager was fittingly recognised in Dublin last night with his induction into the RTÉ/Irish Sports Council Hall of Fame.

But, soft, there is method to my madness. When I were a lad, y’see, the stocky figure stylishly commanding the play for Leeds United and Ireland seemed to be known to one and all as Johnny Giles. But when, after his retirement from active service, he re-emerged on the box for the 1986 World Cup as a man who could talk the game as assuredly as he’d once walked it, he had suddenly somehow become John Giles.

So, again, the question: whatever happened to the footballing artist formerly known as Johnny?

“It was only publicly that I re-emerged as John,” the man of the moment answers with a laugh. “In football, they always put a ‘y’ at the end of your name because it’s supposed to look better or something. But to family and friends I was never, ever, at any stage called Johnny. And my mother hated it. If she ever met people who said, ‘How’s Johnny?’ she’d think, ‘Well, he doesn’t know John’. I know it might have looked ostentatious when I came back on the telly and I was calling myself John. But I just couldn’t call myself Johnny.”

This morning, at least we can all agree to call him a Hall of Famer, after last night’s ceremony saw him follow in the footsteps of such iconic figures of Irish sport as Ronnie Delany, Willie John McBride, Christy O’Connor Snr, Mick O’Connell, Sean Kelly and Barry McGuigan. Widely recognised as one of Irish football’s all-time greatest talents, John Giles is clearly not out of place in such company, yet the 67-year-old insists he still finds himself taken aback by recognition of this kind.

“It’s always unexpected,” he says. “When you’re playing, you’re doing your job and that’s it. You don’t expect to be appreciated. I’d only look at my medals once in a blue moon, because I believe that when your day is done, it’s done. So that’s why it’s always a pleasant surprise when you get recognition years later.”

Indeed, it wasn’t always so. It’s odd to think now, but in his 12 years with the formidable and admittedly star-studded Leeds United side of the late 60s and early 70s, Giles never once made it into the top three in the voting for the club’s player of the year.

“It really didn’t bother me,” he says. “I was never one to play to the crowd. Nowadays, the players are always applauding the crowd or running to them. If I scored, my reaction was just to get on with it. What other players thought was always the most important thing to me. Showing for a team mate in a game won’t be eye-catching — but the player who is in trouble would know.”

Giles’ journey to the centre of the football world began in the family home in Ormonde Square in inner city Dublin where his father Dickie, himself steeped in the game, was a formative influence.

But it was on the streets outside that the midfield general of the future took the first precocious steps in his own career.

“I was always kicking a ball on the street,” he recalls. “It was ideal. First of all, we were playing with what we called a ‘bouncer’, a rubber ball about three times the size of a tennis ball. You were playing on concrete, there were footpaths and railings, so you always had to judge how the ball was going to bounce. It bred good technique. All the best players I ever knew came from the same background as myself — working class, no distractions, no television, computers or i-pods.”

But there was something else about Giles: from an early age it was clear that, as they say in football, the boy was a bit special.

“Yeah, I could play,” is how he puts it. “I was very, very lucky. There are things you can coach but not really good, close technique. I’ll tell you something, without being heavy, it’s a gift. And I would stress — there is no personal satisfaction in that. It’s just like other people are gifted at rugby or golf. I believe that I always had a gift — and mine was to play football.”

Recognising that gift was the first epiphany; choosing not to squander it, the vital follow through.

“That’s the big thing,” he notes. “Lucky enough, I was aware of it and I was responsible. When I finished playing, with (Shamrock) Rovers, I was nearly 40 and there was a satisfaction in looking back and saying I had made the most of what I had. Because it’s quite a boring life, football — if you’re doing it properly. If you live the life properly it’s not a glamorous existence at all — staying in at night, going to bed early, resting in the afternoon.”

Leeds were the team many loved to hate back in the golden years, but Giles maintains that the pros always knew just how good they were.

“Leeds got a bad name especially in their early days when we were a bit rugged,” he offers with an understated chuckle. “But everyone in the game appreciated the Leeds side. It was a great team. Good pros, good lads and individually gifted. I know. I played in it for 12 years and we played some of the best football that I’ve ever seen.”

At which point, your correspondent falls into the trap by recalling that celebrated 7-0 demolition of Southampton, a Match Of The Day evergreen in which Leeds toyed with their demoralised opponents, running through their full repertoire of training ground tricks and flicks as they bossed the ball and left their reeling victims chasing after shadows. Even Giles himself, I remind him, almost nonchalantly joined in the cruel fun.

“But only because I was bored, Liam,” he clarifies. And he’s not joking. “I actually went over to (manager) Don Revie during that game and told him I wanted to come off. The real enjoyment in a match for me was at the height of the battle. When it really means something. People remember that match, which is fair enough, but it would be one of the least memorable matches from my point of view.”

By contrast, Giles has no hesitation in identifying the most memorable — his 1959 debut for Ireland against Sweden at Dalymount Park.

“Everyone’s career is built on dreams,” he reflects. “When I was a kid I used to go to Dalymount with my father and watch Tommy Eglington and Peter Farrell and, particularly, Jackie Carey. So it was always a dream and a burning ambition to play for the international team. And it came true in such a short time. I left for England when I was 15 and it was only three years later that I was actually picked to play in Dalymount. Now, something that I lived for was coming true very quickly.

“In those days, the team met in the Gresham at 11 o’ clock on the day of the match. So there I am going into meet Charlie Hurley and Noel Cantwell and Georgie Cummins — lads I idolised from the terraces. Suddenly, you’re part of it and, whether you’re young or old in football, you’re expected to do your stuff.”

And Giles did his stuff alright, at two down in the match bringing Ireland right back into it against the ‘58 World Cup finalists who, just a couple of days earlier, had beaten England at Wembley.

“I caught one on the volley,” he recalls, “and, luckily enough I caught it spot on. That put us back 2-1 and eventually we went on to win the game 3-2.”

And so, an Irish footballing legend was born. And, nearly 50 years on, as his Hall of Fame accolade acknowledges, John Giles is still a bit special.