Days of Heaven (18 page)

J
ack Charlton was perhaps the one man in the world who had less belief that Ireland could win the World Cup than we had ourselves.

In fact, like most of us, I doubt if the thought ever entered his head. But he had a belief that the Irish could play in the World Cup and not disgrace themselves and when Jack genuinely
believed something, he would usually find a way to get it done.

Even now, one can but marvel at how the Irish found Jack, and Jack found the Irish. He hadn’t even wanted the job, at least not much. He could take it or leave it, which gave him a certain
lightness of being which he would not have had in the England job, one which he genuinely wanted. But he would have been a very bad manager of England because they have this crazy belief that they
can win the World Cup and they expect the manager to deliver on what they regard as a perfectly reasonable expectation.

Jack, no more than Ron Greenwood, or Don Revie, or Bobby Robson, or Graham Taylor, or Glen Hoddle, or Kevin Keegan, or Terry Venables, or Steve McLaren, or Sven, could not have fulfilled that
expectation. And it would have been a very ugly scene.

But somehow, he found himself managing the Irish, who had been conditioned to adopt an attitude which to him came naturally — above all else, the object of the exercise is to avoid
disgracing yourself.

They say that Jack was always like that, that he had a sense of when the job was done, which was not often shared by his more ambitious colleagues. Even at Leeds Utd, who were in the running for
every major title in England and Europe for several years, Jack could be heard wondering aloud how the fuck they kept getting themselves into these situations. You would normally hear a player
talking like that on the last day of the season as his team of perennial strugglers faced into another match which they needed to win to avoid relegation. But Jack would be cursing Leeds’
incorrigible habit of getting themselves into situations when they needed a result to win the League, or maybe even the Double. ‘How do we do it?’ he would say, shaking his head
sadly.

Which might feed into that Official Ireland cliché of the Gruff Yorkshireman, except it wasn’t quite as simple as that.

Jack was regarded by his teammates, not least John Giles, as a top-class player. He also had qualities of honesty and decency, which would far out-weigh these curmudgeonly aspects. And he was a
deceptively skilful player of the media game. He raised no objections to the conventional wisdom that he had taken over the football team of this small country, with players of limited ability, and
that the Irish were punching above their weight. And this wasn’t just the conventional wisdom of the hounds of Wapping: it was put about so much, most of the Irish believed it, too.

Drawn against England again in the first round of Italia 90, we now had one overriding need, which was the same overriding need we had had in Euro 88: above all else, the object
of the exercise was to avoid disgracing ourselves. In a perverse way, the fact that we were drawn in the same group as England again would have suited Jack. It concentrated the mind on something
other than winning the World Cup. That was for others, such as Italy, and Germany, and Argentina and ... ahem ... England.

In fact, our thoughts were still so far away from such extravagant notions, it ensured a perfect meeting of minds between the manager and the multitudes. We were also up against Wor Dutch again,
a wearying thought for both us and them, but Egypt, the fourth team in the Group, represented the road to freedom.

In our own way we had an imperialist attitude to Egypt, knowing little about them but sort of assuming that we would always be better than them at football. Just by some process of natural
selection. Since the four best third-placed teams would qualify from the six Groups, the deal went something like this: we would do everything humanly possible against England to avoid being
disgraced; we would probably struggle against Holland but so would everyone else, so we didn’t mind that; and since Holland would beat Egypt, and England would probably beat Egypt too, it
surely wouldn’t be beyond our capabilities to do slightly better than Egypt. And thus the job would be done. And Ireland would be free.

Again, one can but wonder what Jack wanted from this World Cup, in which four of the six Groups would send three teams to the last 16, making the task of qualifying from the Group stage about as
easy as it gets, if that’s all you want. And I really do believe that’s all Jack wanted, but in matching our limited ambitions, Jack also gave leadership. He may have been the one man
in the world who had less belief that Ireland could win the World Cup than we had ourselves, but he strongly believed that we could get a result against England. Or even against Wor Dutch. And he
was able to communicate that belief.

He had worked it out.

He kept talking about having gone to the last World Cup and taken notes, which told him that every country was playing the same way, with this slow-build-up and a lot of passing the ball back
and forth across the field to no apparent purpose. He saw that there was a place for something a lot more, shall we say, uncomplicated. In fact, it was his great strength and his great weakness,
that he could only see the game, and indeed the world, through his own eyes.

And those were the eyes of a big centre-half. A very good, big centre-half, but one who believed that if he received the ball on the edge of his own penalty area, there was a fair chance he
might lose it, so as a player he would try to avoid that, and as a manager he would insist, on pain of death, that anyone playing for him would avoid it, too.

It was not an attractive message, but there was something very attractive in the absolute clarity with which he expressed it. There was never a sliver of doubt in the minds of the players as to
what was expected of them. And that if they failed to do it, they were gone. Even if they were Liam Brady, late of Juventus, they were gone.

Though Jack would claim that he was not just an unthinking philistine who had something against creative players,
per se
— he would find a place for his own brother, Bobby, in any
team that he managed, because Bobby was, after all, perhaps the greatest footballer who ever lived. Yes, he would always pick Bobby — BUT ONLY IF HE DID WHAT JACK WANTED HIM TO DO.

Several of the Irish players could do a lot more than what Jack wanted them to do, but even they responded to this quality of leadership in him, helped by the fact that it seemed to be working
and getting them to places they’d never been before in a green shirt.

And the people responded too.

Historically, Paddy was not unfamiliar with the tongue of the Englishman issuing crude instructions and expecting total obedience. But in this case, he seemed to be doing rather well out of
it.

And there was a certain feeling of liberation too, a sense that we had been freed from all that bullshit of ours about the great poets and the great patriots and the great saints. Now all we
wanted was what any other normal people wanted — a result.

We appreciated the fact that Jack seemed to insist on doing things properly, things we mightn’t do quite as properly ourselves with our fetish for improvisation, for busking it. Things
that the
FAI
could never have done without expert help, like bringing the players to Malta before the World Cup, to acclimatise. Watching the players sunning themselves over
there in Malta, we felt a strange sense of ownership, almost a sense that they were members of our own family who had done well for themselves, stretched out there beside the pool getting a
tan.

Could we afford this? Of course we could, we were in the World Cup now, and it was a long way from that poor sick scribe slumped across the typewriter in his darkened hotel room in Malta, a long
way from his desolate words: ‘Last night in the Ta’ Qali ...’

But we were on a mission as well as a holiday, because we would not just be facing England, we would be facing the England supporters, who still had a reputation as the worst hooligans on the
face of the earth. We would be sent down there to Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia, we, the best supporters in the world, thrown in with this horde of nazi bastards. And then over to Sicily for
the next two matches, more frigging hardship, more frigging boats, more planning to be done. And planning was never our strong suit.

It was as if they were trying to load all these logistics onto Paddy so that he simply wouldn’t have the time or the energy to get drunk and to engage the enemy. We, the good guys, would
be shipped off the mainland to provide opposition for these low-lifes. We would be put in cages, just like them. To protect us from them.

The Dutch, we imagined, would be too stoned to be getting stuck in or involved in any coherent way, and the Egyptian fans probably wouldn’t bother coming at all.

Again, our theory of Irish exceptionalism hadn’t quite worked out as we supposed it might. Could
FIFA
not have quietly arranged it so that we’d be drawn
against Italy, in Rome, which would suit us in so many ways, culturally, historically and indeed alcoholically? And suit Italy too, because obviously they’d beat us?

Ah, but perhaps we had been chosen for a higher task. Like the monks of the Blaskets, it would fall to us to keep the flame of civilisation alive down there on the island. We would wear our
colours, not just to express our pride in our lads, but to distinguish ourselves from the English and to say, ‘We are not them’.

It appealed to Paddy’s innate sense of martyrdom, this idea that we would stand for goodness, even for Christianity, against the heathens — a bit like the way that Archbishop McQuaid
wanted the football men of Dublin to stand against the Communists — except this time we’d do it. Like we had done throughout the ages. And we would do it with great big smiles plastered
all over our faces, because we would be drinking our heads off, just like the enemy, except we would not go mad, like them, and kill a load of innocent people. We would go mad in a good way.

And there were some other matches going on as well.

It was lovely feeling, to be sitting in the International on a bright Friday afternoon, drinking pints of Guinness and watching the opening match of the World Cup, knowing that we were actually
involved in this thing. That these great events — even the opening ceremony — concerned us in some tangible way. That we no longer had our noses pressed up against the window, watching
the feasting within.

I had felt this same sense of belonging, as a child, on the day in 1970 that Athlone Town played their first match in the League of Ireland against Shamrock Rovers. It was almost too much to
take in, this move to higher ground, where you would encounter beings you knew only by reputation, wondrous mythical creatures like Mick Leech and Frank O’Neill and all the other class acts
who played for Rovers at that time. And there were feelings of danger too — these guys could destroy you in five seconds if you weren’t careful.

Embarrassment would duly come in a big way. It would be seen all over the football world in
TV
pictures showing the Athlone keeper swinging from the crossbar and breaking
it during the
FAI
Cup semi-final against Finn Harps — breaking it twice indeed, for the punchline. Oh, how they laughed.

But I felt that sense of belonging again when the Town moved to even higher ground, on the day they played
AC
Milan in St Mel’s Park in the
UEFA
Cup in 1975, the match that famously ended in a scoreless draw with John Minnock, Athlone’s best player, missing a penalty.

Over the years I have become a sort of unofficial historian of that seminal event, a story which I think draws its terrible power from the strange magnificence of that missed penalty — the
trauma of it, the sheer mad profligacy of it, the absurd waste of such an opportunity to defeat these gods who had brought their own food and wine to this remote place at the end of the world, and
who had watched in awe as a pipe band marched around the pitch before kick-off, led by a goat.

And apart from the superstar, Gianni Rivera, and Albertosi, the Italy goalkeeper in the 1970 World Cup Final against Brazil, who saved Minnock’s penalty, and the hatchet-man, Romeo
Benetti, one of the Milanese who witnessed this was a former player who had just joined their coaching staff, a chap called Giovanni Trapattoni.

The missing of that penalty created a sort of magic which neither side could find the energy to disturb for the rest of that game, and for about an hour of the return match in the San Siro
stadium. I now have no doubt, having reflected deeply on this, that if John Minnock had scored that penalty, Milan would have had their arrogance pricked enough to get mad and to get even, and
possibly to beat us out the door.

And it would all have been forgotten.

Instead it was all coming back to me, in all its raging glory, as George Byrne and I and a full house of Friday-afternoon boozers watched Argentina playing Cameroon in the first match of Italia
90, knowing that on Monday night it would be our turn, against the old enemy, England.

The opening match was held in Milan, in the San Siro where the Town had held out for 63 minutes until
AC
put them away with three goals.

And there was madness in Cameroon, too.

There is always madness in places like Cameroon when they get a big result and we read a little paragraph in the paper quietly informing us that 23 people were killed in various stampedes and
shooting incidents as fans celebrated on the streets for a fortnight.

We sort of envied them for their utter lack of inhibition and the fact that they had something to celebrate, regardless of the health and safety aspects. And now they were beating Argentina, the
holders.

They had been playing in defiance of all the stereotypes. They weren’t going to be kicked back home to Africa by the Argie strongmen, leaving Maradona to destroy what was left of them. It
was they who were doing the kicking and getting two red cards for it. And they could play a bit, too. Cameroon won 1-0, which had to be a good thing for us.