Jack Charlton Tribute

It was late in the game and we were chasing a rare victory. The ball was punted into the corner and I went in pursuit, as fast as my chubby thighs could drag me. Sweat and condensation had combined around the edges of the Muirhevnamore indoor sports centre that cold November night in 1987 and while I had recently qualified as an Accountant, I wasn’t earning enough to afford decent trainers.

I slipped and twisted my left ankle to such an extent, that thirty three years later, I still feel it when the barometer falls or a stone in a road tilts my foot more than five degrees.

I was hauled off the court and driven home by my boss, who made up for the crap salary he paid me by telling me to take the next day off and to stay in bed resting my ankle. That next day was the 11^th November 1987, a day that will go down in Irish History, although few expected it at the time.

Ireland were in group 7 in the qualification process for Euro 1988. A promising campaign was petering out, as many others had since I started watching football in the early 70s. We had completed all our games but Bulgaria only needed a draw at home in their last match to finish ahead of us and take the only qualifying place. Their opponents that damp and dreary night in Sofia were Scotland, a team that were the definition of being less than the sum of their parts. They had nothing to play for apart from their pride, a commodity that seemed to be of low value, if the first eighty seven minutes of the game were anything to go by.

My dear old Dad had rigged the portable telly up in my bedroom and perched my stricken ankle atop a bed of pillows. RTE, the Irish state TV service, had secured rights to show the game in a fit of optimism that wasn’t shared by the general population. The match was meandering towards its expected conclusion and the Bulgarians looked happy enough to settle for a point. Then something happened that changed my life and the life of millions of Irish people around the world.

Scotland had shown no ambition and seemed to be in a hurry to get of town as quickly as possible, given that communist Sofia in 1987 must have made Glasgow look like Las Vegas. One of the Scots was ambling towards the side-line when he was needlessly hacked down. The ref played advantage and the violence of the tackle seemed to finally rouse the tartan dragon, as the ball broke to Gary McKay and he slammed it into the net.

What happened afterwards is probably the cause of my still occasionally aching ankle all these years later. I jumped up and ran into the living room to hug my Dad. We held onto each other while injury time was being played and wept when the final whistle blew. My Dad was 54 at the time and this was the first time he’d ever seen Ireland qualify for anything.

Seven months later, I was living and working in London. My mates were in Germany for the Euro 88 finals. I had tickets for the games but couldn’t get off work and so I watched them from behind a sofa in a mates flat. Two years later I was in Italy for Ireland’s debut at the World Cup. I look back now and those years were among the best of my life. I was heading out into the wide world at the same time that Ireland was playing itself onto the world stage.

Jack Charlton was the Irish Manager then and he captured the zeitgeist of a country bursting to be free. We danced in fountains, we strove to outdo each other in garish 1990s attire and we murdered “The Fields of Athenty” in pubs from Stuttgart to Seoul. It was a gift to be an Irish person during those wonder years. To stand tall among the nations of the World and to burst with pride. But I feel particularly blessed that I got to experience this during the years when I was most able to enjoy it. When I still had a sense of wonder for what the world might offer and had the appetite to go out and gobble it up.

I started a relationship just before the World Cup kicked off in 1990. That relationship fizzled out during the World Cup four years later. The team was getting older and more cynical by then and so was I.

Jack’s final game in charge was in December 1995. I watched that in a pub in Auckland on my second day ever in New Zealand. That was when I first came here and fell in love with the country, a love that led to move here when the opportunity arose in 2015. In many ways then, the Jack Charlton era book marked my life.

He died last week and those memories came flooding back. It seems I’m not the only one. There has been an outpouring of nostalgia and sympathy in the Irish media, often from people who weren’t even alive when Jack Charlton was in his pomp. He is being credited with kicking off the Celtic tiger, something that I guess will be passed on to Mary Robinson when she passes away.

But I’ll remember the packed pubs, the away trips and the fact that it is now thirty five years since England last defeated us in Football. There were many magical nights, my favourite being one at Wembley when my mate climbed the fence that separated us from the English fans and screamed “You’ll never beat the Irish” at what turned out to be the wheel chair enclosure.

I miss those lazy hazy days. We’ll never see the like again. Rest easy Jack. You made us realise that not everything needs to be shit.