Find­ing Jack Charlton

Jack Charlton’s career was defined by his suc­cess on football’s biggest stage. As a play­er he famous­ly lift­ed the Jules Rimet tro­phy along­side younger broth­er Bob­by at the World Cup in 1966, while as a head coach he led the Repub­lic of Ireland’s men’s nation­al side to its first major inter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, cul­mi­nat­ing in their unlike­ly defeat of Italy in the group stages of USA ​’94.

Find­ing Jack Charl­ton recounts these tri­umphs with the kind of wist­ful roman­ti­cism one expects from a film about a great of the beau­ti­ful game. Things were a lot dif­fer­ent back in Jack’s day: men were men, foot­ballers were tough, and man­agers tend­ed to be hard-drink­ing, straight-talk­ing and sin­gle-mind­ed. These traits are hard­ly scru­ti­nised here; archival footage and first-hand tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by var­i­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers, for­mer play­ers and col­leagues con­sol­i­dates the pop­u­lar image of the cheeky lad from Ash­ing­ton who did it his way, achiev­ing sport­ing immor­tal­i­ty through sheer force of will.

Access to thou­sands of hand-scrawled notes, which Jack made through­out his career, enables direc­tors Gabriel Clarke and Pete Thomas to pro­vide insight into what moti­vat­ed him on and off the pitch. Charl­ton, they argue, was an astute tac­ti­cian and a com­pas­sion­ate, if uncom­pro­mis­ing, man man­ag­er. Ex pros from Paul McGrath to Andy Townsend speak fond­ly of a no-non­sense coach­ing phi­los­o­phy that now seems ahead of its time. It was not for his good nature and wry sense of humour alone that Charl­ton became adored on both sides of the Irish Sea: he was undoubt­ed­ly a prag­mat­ic and savvy practitioner.

But there’s anoth­er side to this sto­ry. Filmed dur­ing the last 18 months of Charlton’s life (he passed away on 10 July of this year), this is first and fore­most a por­trait of a fad­ing icon. Shift­ing the focus away from foot­ball, the film reveals Charl­ton to be in the late stages of demen­tia, brought on by a pre­vi­ous­ly undoc­u­ment­ed diag­no­sis of Alzheimer’s. Rarely has the day-to-day real­i­ty of this ter­ri­ble dis­ease been laid bare in such inti­mate, heart-wrench­ing detail – cer­tain­ly not in the con­text of a vale­dic­to­ry sport­ing biography.

There is an acute sad­ness that comes with wit­ness­ing the end of a jour­ney like this. At his home, sur­round­ed by loved ones and memen­tos of his glo­ry days, Charl­ton appears relaxed and cheer­ful as ever, but it’s clear that by this point his mem­o­ries were already lost to him. The glint in his eye has gone. Hav­ing per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced see­ing a close rel­a­tive suc­cumb to demen­tia, how­ev­er, I’m slight­ly uncom­fort­able about the way this doc­u­men­tary frames Jack’s con­di­tion as a chal­lenge, as though it is a bat­tle to be won or lost. The truth is that the effects of this cru­el ill­ness are beyond anyone’s control.

Charl­ton reached the sum­mit of his sport with a smile on his face and touched count­less lives in the process. He was a fear­less cen­tre half, a shrewd and gra­cious coach and, above all, a cham­pi­on. Per­haps it’s best for ordi­nary fans like me, who could nev­er claim to have real­ly known the man, to remem­ber him that way.