“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?