He went on to lead a golden generation of heroes who will forever be cast in solid green, white and gold, yet there was venom in the animosity directed towards Jack Charlton’s when he was appointed as Republic of Ireland manager in 1986.
An Englishman being handed the keys of power in Irish football was contentious enough given the chequered history between the two nations, but that was not the only reason why Big Jack’s arrival was treated with scepticism.
Legendary former Liverpool manager Bob Paisley missed out on the job in a contentious vote among Irish football chiefs, with Charlton’s unwelcome presence not helped by his desire to remove ‘real’ Irishmen such as Liam Brady from his team and replace them with English and Scottish-born players who qualified to play for his team via the grandparent rule.
John Aldridge and Ray Houghton were among his early recruits. Quickly, the doubts evaporated as Charlton’s boys in green qualified for the 1998 European Championships, beating England in a famous game in Stuttgart and coming close to knocking eventual champions Holland out of the competition in the group stages.
A run to the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup finals and more success as they qualified for the World Cup in America four years later cemented the status of Charlton’s iconic team and when you hear the story from a man who lived through most of it, the success is even more remarkable.
As a man who witnessed the evolution of the team firsthand, Andy Townsend, who captained the side at USA ’94, played a key role in the moving documentary ‘Finding Jack Charlton’, which he also supported as executive producer.
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