Читать книгу Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict - Leo McKinstry - Страница 5

The images of that Saturday afternoon in July 1966 have become forever ingrained on our national consciousness: Jack Charlton falling to his knees at the final whistle, his face buried in his hands as if in grateful, exhausted prayer; his brother Bobby crying freely as he climbs up to the Royal Box to collect his World Cup winner’s medal. It was a display of emotion that perfectly captured the mood of triumph and relief that swept across the country.

‘Nobody can ever take this moment away from us,’ said Bobby to his brother as they hugged each other at the end of the match. He was absolutely correct. Whatever else they have achieved in life, the two Charlton brothers will always be best remembered for their part in England’s glory of 1966. Indeed, their contrasting roles on the field symbolized the virtues of England’s performance during that unique campaign: Jack, the rock of the defence, ungainly but uncompromising, lacking sophistication but never valour, as tough and honest as the mining stock into which he was born; Bobby, the fulcrum of the attack, gliding across the turf like a thoroughbred, destroying opponents with his explosive goals, long-range passes and incisive runs. Never, it seemed, were there two more patriotic footballers, willing, in Churchill’s phrase, to give ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ in the national cause.

The bond between the brothers, forged at birth and reinforced by their mutual choice of a career in football, must have seemed unbreakable that day at Wembley. Any belief that they were close to each other can only have been strengthened by a host of other striking parallels about their lives. Both played the game obsessively in their youth and turned out for the same local YMCA side. Both joined major city clubs, Leeds and Manchester United, at exactly the same age, 15, and each won a cabinet-full of domestic honours. In 1965, they became the first brothers this century to play together for England. The links continued after the triumph of 1966. Both retired from First Division football in the same year, after careers of outstanding loyalty – each holds the League appearance record for their club, Jack with 629 for Leeds, Bobby with 606 for Manchester United. Both started in League management in the same 1973/74 season in the Second Division. Later, they both became major figures on the international stage, Jack as a brilliantly successful manager of the Republic of Ireland, Bobby as a roving ambassador for top-class sports bids, such as the campaign to bring the 2006 World Cup to England.

Brought up in a close-knit working-class mining community where the values of respectability were paramount, both have led lives of restraint and dignity. Given their celebrity status – Jimmy Hill once described Bobby, not unjustly, as ‘the most famous Englishman in the world’ – it would have been easy for either of them to have fallen into the destructive pattern of heavy drinking, financial chaos and private dissolution that has characterized the lives of too many sporting greats, such as George Best, James Hunt or Denis Compton. Yet there has never been a whiff of scandal about their personal lives, both of them enjoying remarkably strong, happy marriages, as well as becoming millionaires through football and business. As John Giles, of Leeds, Manchester United and Ireland, put it to me: ‘I think Bobby and Jack have been great ambassadors for both football and for working-class England, because they have always behaved impeccably throughout their careers, handling fame and fortune in a way that most people could not begin to comprehend. They have never put a foot wrong, never become big-headed or gone astray. There is an underlying decency about them which stems from that background.’

That spirit of honour extended to football, where they were seen by most of their colleagues as hard-working professionals, fiercely competitive by nature, who would never let their side down. ‘The great thing about Jack,’ says his former Leeds colleague Willie Bell, ‘was that he would absolutely never give up. I have seen Jack with blood running down his face and, even then, he would not come off the field. He would never surrender, even when we were down, and that attitude rubbed off on the rest of the team. He was just a great professional.’ It is a view echoed by David Harvey, the Leeds and Scotland goalkeeper, who told me: ‘It was very reassuring to have Jack in front of me. He was a bit of a Godfather, looking after me really well. He was so commanding, always shouting at the rest of us and organizing the defence like a military policeman. He always played to such a high standard. His consistency was first class, no matter what the occasion.’

Exactly the same views are expressed about Bobby. His teammate David Sadler says, ‘Bobby had a terrific appetite and energy for the game and always worked so hard for the team. He took the knocks, which are part and parcel of football, and just got on with it.’ Martin Buchan recalls him as an ideal professional, even at the end of his career: ‘He was so utterly dedicated, dedicated to both United and to football. He was a wonderful example to any youngster coming into the game. I remember once, in his last season, he was left out of the team and when he got the news, he did not storm out of the ground, as a lot of other players would have done, but instead put his kit on and did several laps around the pitch, just so he would remain fit. That was the kind of man he was, always working so hard.’ It was because of this outlook that both Bobby and Jack fitted easily into Sir Alf Ramsey’s England team of the 1960s, where so much emphasis was placed on the work ethic.

Yet, for all such superficial similarities, the really fascinating point about Jack and Bobby is how utterly different they are. Almost every person who knows them says that they are ‘chalk and cheese’ – so dissimilar that it is hard to believe that they are from the same family. ‘The difference between them is enormous,’ says Ian Greaves, the former Manchester United player, who went on to be a highly successful manager at Huddersfield, Bolton and Mansfield. ‘You would not take them for brothers at all. I remember Jack in his early days at Leeds: loud, ebullient, down to earth and very, very stubborn. All he wanted to do was party and fight. He was so unlike Bobby, who was very quiet, shy, polite.’ Joe Carolan, another Manchester United player, agrees: ‘Jack is a different kettle of fish altogether from Bobby. Bobby was a gentleman, whereas Jack would kick you straight up in the air. Jack would never shut up on the field, but you hardly ever heard a word out of Bobby.’

This chasm between Bobby and Jack covers every aspect of their lives, from the playing styles to their political outlook. In truth, it is not just that they are different, but that they are almost opposites. On the football field, for instance, Jack was the Roundhead, Bobby the Cavalier. Bobby’s entire game was focused on scoring goals, Jack’s on stopping them. Bobby’s football vocabulary was dominated by words like creative, opening, expansive and flair, whereas Jack’s was filled with terms like keeping it tight and closing them down. A 0–0 draw was a triumph for Jack, a disaster for Bobby. Where Bobby was hailed by international critics for his attacking genius, Jack was seen as the epitome of rugged English defending.

In action, Bobby was lithe and fluent, while Jack was angular and hard. Hardly a soul would pay to watch Jack Charlton play; millions did to watch Bobby. Even the most cynical professionals admit that when Bobby was in full flow, there was no more beautiful sight in football. In 1969 The Times football correspondent Geoffrey Green wrote this famous description of Bobby’s approach: ‘It is the explosive facets of his play that will remain in the memory. His thinning, fair hair streaming in the wind, he has moved like a ship in full sail. He always possessed an elemental quality; jinking, changing feet and direction, turning gracefully on the ball, or accelerating through a gap surrendered by a confused enemy.’ Contrast that lyricism with the words of Bobby Moore about Jack: ‘Some days we would be going out and I’d look at him and wonder how this big giraffe played football. We used to argue black and blue because I wanted to get the ball down and play the game and he wanted to hoof it away to safety.’ In the same way, Bobby played far more within the rules of the game. During his long career, he was only booked twice, and both of those were in dubious circumstances when he had not committed any foul but was deemed to have shown dissent. ‘He was like a giant who would kick anything. If you were in the way, you went with it. He was hard, really hard,’ says Tony Allen of Stoke and England.

Jack and Bobby were from the Milburn footballing clan of Northumberland. But their football reflected the two different sides of this family. So Jack followed in the footsteps of his four uncles, who were all uncompromising defenders with top-class clubs, and his great-grandfather Jack Milburn, who was known to local fans as ‘Warhorse’. Bobby took much more after his mother’s cousin, the great Newcastle and England striker Jackie Milburn, whose brilliant goals in the 1950s made him perhaps the most loved of all Geordie footballers.

Physically, Jack and Bobby do not look like brothers at all. ‘Bobby is handsome, whereas Jack is ugly,’ is the rather brutal verdict of former Liverpool winger Peter Thompson. Jack is gangly, 6’ 3", thin, with a long neck and telescopic legs and ‘looks like a cactus’, according to Brian Labone, his England rival for the centre-half position. Bobby is much shorter, just 5’ 9”, and, when he was a player, he was built like an athlete. ‘When we were in first in the dressing room together,’ says Bob McNab of Arsenal and England, ‘what really struck me about Bobby was his magnificent physique. We worked out at Arsenal more than at most other clubs, but it really impressed me how strong Bobby was. I could not believe what he looked like. Besides his supreme gifts as a footballer, God gave him a great body to go with it.’ In contrast, McNab claims that Jack was ‘a big, horrible bugger, not likely to win any fashion competition’.

There is just as big a contrast in their personalities. Jack is explosive, gregarious, self-confident, and voluble. A brilliant after-dinner speaker, he loves an audience and speaking his mind. ‘He would argue anything with anyone,’ says his wife Pat. Forgetful and disorganised, he cares little about his appearance and became notorious in the football world for his untidiness in both the dressing room and hotels.

Every one of these traits is absent in Bobby. A stickler for punctuality, he is always well groomed. Where Jack does not have a shy bone in his body, shyness is the word that is most frequently used about Bobby. This characteristic is sometimes regarded as aloofness, a charge often labelled at him by some hardcore Manchester United fans of today. In the football fraternity, his occasional reluctance to greet others has caused more offence than his brother’s expression of his forthright views. Former United manager Ron Atkinson has even described him as a ‘grizzlin’ old misery, a dour, very distant individual.’ The truth is that Bobby, because of his self-conscious, reserved nature, is wary of strangers and dislikes large public gatherings, much preferring the company of a small circle of trusted friends. Hearing the sound of his own voice is a delight to Jack, an anathema to Bobby.

With his fiery temper and rhinoceros hide, Jack can dish it out and take it much more easily than Bobby, who is sensitive to criticism and cannot ignore a slight. John Giles recalls, ‘I would have a blazing row with Jack on Saturday. We would even be grabbing each other by the throat, especially because Jack has a short fuse, and over the weekend I would think about it. On Monday I would come in and say, “Sorry Jack,” and he would have genuinely forgotten about it. Bobby would be different. He would take a row to heart, and might not speak for a week afterwards.’ Because of his willingness to express his opinions, Jack’s career has been littered with public controversies, perhaps most notoriously over his claim, made on television in 1970, that he had ‘a little black book’ in which he kept the names of his footballing enemies. It turned out to be a joke, for the ‘little black book’ existed only in Jack’s volatile imagination. But the row did him untold damage at the Football Association, perhaps ensuring that he was never appointed to the England management job he wanted so badly. Bobby, on the other hand, became a standard bearer for the English game, serving as a director of Manchester United and an ambassador for England’s World Cup bid in 2006.

Yet the same diplomatic streak meant Bobby was doomed to fail in management when he took over at Preston. Unlike his brother, he did not have the outward strength of personality needed to cope with the endless conflicts of the manager’s job. Furthermore, because he was such a gifted footballer, playing by natural instinct, he never had to analyse the game too deeply. So when it came to tactics and patterns of play, he struggled. But Jack, with far less ability, had long been fascinated by systems, and was a qualified FA coach before he was 30. Unlike Bobby, he had no reluctance about stamping his methods on every team he organized. He knew exactly what he wanted, whether it be at Middlesbrough or Ireland, and he would brook no arguments. ‘It was Jack’s way or you didn’t play,’ says David Kelly, who served under Jack with the Republic of Ireland.

The gap between them runs far beyond football. They also have completely different interests, with Jack liking country pursuits such as shooting and Bobby preferring the more suburban activity of golf. Where Jack cultivates the image of the cloth-capped countryman, with a gun in his hands and wellingtons on his feet, Bobby is much more at ease in the director’s box, wearing a dapper suit or blazer. Despite the Munich crash, Bobby loves to travel all over the world, whereas Jack is always at his happiest in the fields of his native Northumberland. Bobby is essentially conservative in his outlook, while Jack is a staunch socialist.

This sense of difference goes right back to the brothers’ childhood in Ashington. Tellingly, Jack went to secondary school, while Bobby went to grammar school. Again, the separation of pupils along grammar and secondary lines was one of the great fault lines of working class life until the arrival of comprehensive education in the 1960s. Yet, while the gap between Bobby and Jack was undoubtedly exacerbated by their schooling, they were always travelling on different paths from their early years, since they were such very different children. Jack was the rebel, Bobby the conformist. Trouble was an alien word to Bobby. It was Jack’s middle name.

And so it remained for the rest of their lives. While on the football field their careers flourished, the rift between the brothers grew in private. This mutual antagonism was fuelled not only by the tragedy of the Munich air crash in 1958, which made Bobby even more introspective and distant, but also by a long-term feud between their closest relatives, which tore Jack and Bobby apart and left them barely on speaking terms.

Given the fascinating contours of the Charltons’ tale, it is remarkable that there has never been a comprehensive, joint biography until now. The only previous book on them was written more than thirty years ago, in 1971, by the New Zealander Norman Harris. Though it provides some compelling insights, particularly about their early lives, it is based entirely on their own testimony and uses hardly any other sources. The shelf is equally bare when it comes to separate biographies. Astonishingly, despite the deluge of books on Manchester United stars – even Dennis Viollet, winner of just two England caps, was the subject of a 333-page work in 2001 – no-one has ever attempted to write a life of England’s greatest living footballer, Sir Bobby Charlton, while Jack has been rewarded with just a thin 1994 account from journalist Stan Liversedge. Moreover, unlike Jack, who penned a bestselling autobiography in 1996, Sir Bobby has never written his own life story. Since his retirement as a player, all he has produced is one light book of soccer anecdotes.

It is my hope that, with this joint biography, I will go some way towards rectifying this strange gap in British football literature. No-one can dispute the vast contribution the Charltons have made to the soccer of our islands over the last half century. It is now right that the story behind that contribution should be told for the first time.