by Declan Lynch
On the way out the door, in a state of high excitement, Paul gave me his telephone number in Manchester, written on a scrap of paper.
I said I would make that call.
Of course I would make that call.
I never made that call. For days, for weeks afterwards, I would look at that number and know deep down that I could not make that call. Because even when we are starting to get lost in the fog of alcohol, there is some voice that calls us back.
At some level that I didn’t really comprehend at the time, I still knew that when a man is out drinking and he starts making elaborate plans, and he makes a certain commitment, he doesn’t necessarily mean it. Even if he says on the night: ‘I mean it’. Especially if he says on the night: ‘I mean it’.
And that voice which called me back was a good voice, a protective voice. Because of course the book that Paul and I would have produced at the time, given our mutual state of awareness about the way we were, would have been a tad, shall we say, incomplete.
The autobiography he would eventually produce with Vincent Hogan would become one of the most successful Irish sports books of all time. It would tell the story of a man who was coming to accept his powerlessness over alcohol. But that would be nearly twenty years later, when Paul was ready for it. In the run-up to Euro 88, he wasn’t ready for it. And I wasn’t ready for it.
Which was not something I knew for sure at the time, just an intuition that stopped me making that call.
I’m sure that Paul understood, in fact I know that he did, because I would go on to interview him for Hot Press at the zenith of the Charlton years.
It was still a rare thing for him to be interviewed, but he seemed to be in a good place that day in Bloom’s Hotel. He revealed that Jack used to call him ‘John’, perhaps confusing him with John McGrath, who was the Southampton centre-half when Jack was a player. He joked about his knees. Indeed ...
He never mentioned that ghost biography, and neither did I. Since he had agreed to do the interview it seemed self-evident that he had lost no sleep over it.
But I wonder, I wonder ... if we’d had mobile phones back in 1988, or even a land-line in the flat, I wonder if I’d have made that call. And to what madness it might have led us.
There is something to be said after all, for the phone in the hall.
They kept calling him a gruff Yorkshireman, but Jack Charlton wasn’t from Yorkshire at all, but from Northumberland. Famously, along with Jack and his brother Bobby, the northeast mining town of Ashington had produced the Milburns, an illustrious football family related to the Charltons, and which included the celebrated Newcastle Utd centre-forward Jackie Milburn, ‘Wor Jackie’.
The Charltons were much closer to that Geordie tradition than to the gruff Yorkshire mould into which Jack had been placed by so many of his new admirers.
It may be just that irresistible urge to embrace the cliché, but in Ireland, we think we’re better than that.
Not that Jack himself would give a monkey’s, but we pride ourselves on knowing more about England than England knows about us. Thus if, say, Roy Keane were to be routinely described in the British media as a Kerryman, we would shake our heads sadly at this new nadir in tabloid vulgarity. Because we would know that these are not minor matters; that for a very long time, we have been obsessed with these questions of who we are and what we are and where we’re coming from.
The first thing that Paddy says to Paddy when they meet on foreign soil, is ‘what part are you from?’ We have a deep understanding of these matters of identity as they relate to ourselves, but beyond that, apparently we lose interest.
Our self-absorption is that of a teenager, as is natural for the citizens of a young country. And our self-esteem has never been the best. In fact, as I learned more about the nature of addiction, I came across a definition which has a haunting resonance for anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them — big ego, low self-esteem is the classic combination, the essential duality in the psyche of the alcoholic.
Big ego ... low self-esteem. Ah, yes, that would ring a few bells, for Paddy.
So right from the start, our love for Paul McGrath was no doubt partly rooted in this profound intuition, this sixth sense that he had the ‘weakness’ which so many of us have. And that withal, he was magnificent.
And then it got a bit tricky, because even though the true story of Paul McGrath had not yet been told, we probably knew enough at that stage to realise that he was magnificent despite his Irishness, and all that had happened to him on this side of the Irish Sea. Deep down, we were guilty that we could do so little for such a vulnerable kid, that England at least could provide him with a stage on which he could display his great gifts.
Though lest we forget, if Ireland had abused him, England in turn had abused Ireland. Always, there was the get-out clause.
We had had this uniquely twisted relationship with Johnny England for a very long time, until the wonders of the Charlton years forced us to move away somewhat from the comforting simplicities of old and to realise that maybe, just maybe, we could handle the truth. Which, as was suggested by another Irishman who did rather well for himself in England, is ‘rarely pure and never simple’.
We were in Germany now, with England beaten at their own game.
But how could we have done it without them? This defining moment in our island story had been granted to us, not by our Gaelic football and the amateur ethos of which we are so proud. Not by our hurling, which is ‘the fastest team sport in the world’, and not by our handball, or anything else that might be played in the environs of Croke Park. It was all down to association football, the game of the conqueror and the coloniser; and the man in charge, trying to correct some of our ancient inadequacies, was a ‘gruff Yorkshireman’.
Likewise, it was a bookie from Belfast, Barney Eastwood, who steered Barry McGuigan to the world title in boxing, again not one of our Gaelic games, but which kept us going anyway during McGuigan’s glorious run.
In fact, Euro 88 came just a year after the astounding achievements of Stephen Roche, who came apparently out of nowhere (Dundrum actually) to win the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the World road race Championship, all in 1987.
Again, his efforts had owed virtually nothing to the traditions of the Gael, apart from the tradition of getting the hell out of here if you’re any good.
I had heard of Sean Kelly, because of a highly-regarded book about him by the sports writer David Walsh, but Roche meant nothing to me when, as Hot Press roving ambassador to the world of sport, I arrived to interview him very early one morning, placing my absurdly large cassette recorder on the table in front of him, while he breakfasted in a hotel in the borough of Dun Laoghaire, shortly before he and the rest of his fellow cyclists started the journey to Cork.
In fact, the extent of my knowledge can be gauged by my incredulity at his proposed schedule, this idea which he had casually voiced, whereby they would cycle all the way from Dublin to Cork.
‘You mean ... you’ll actually cycle ... all the way?’
‘Well, if the wind is against us, we might drive to Portlaoise and just take it from there’, he said.
Good luck with that, I thought.
‘By the way, could you not have brought a bigger tape-recorder?’ he quipped, with that understated wit which would become so familiar to us all a year later.
For now, it was all just a bit baffling, especially at such an early hour.
And anyway it was only cycling, about which I was no more ignorant than any other Irish person, little knowing that soon we would be speaking sagely about the peloton and the echelon and forming considered opinions about the abilities of various domestiques. But I remember being impressed, as the photographer took the pictures, at the way Roche insisted on getting all his sponsorship logos together before the snapper did his thing. Yes, the interview might have been a waste of time, but the picture would make it vaguely worth his while.
You could tell he’
d been abroad, to be so attuned to the commercial realities of modern sport. That he had left Paddy behind on the Sally Gap in this regard. The Boys In Green, in these early days, would be drinking all night with journalists, expecting nothing in return expect perhaps the vague prospect that one of them might write his autobiography, or spending the afternoon singing in Windmill Lane for no great reward except perhaps its knock-on benefit for squad morale. The players singing ‘The Boys In Green’ on the Late Late Show, for all the world like a bunch of well-meaning lads from the pub down the road who had got this thing together to pay for an operation for a sick child is one of the more poignant images of that time — but a step up from the night when Gay Byrne announced, ‘I have just been handed a piece of paper here which says that Jack Charlton has been appointed manager of Ireland — whatever that means’.
Roche, his jersey plastered with the logos which he insisted be in place before any pictures would be taken, had left us all behind. And we revered him for it, gathering in multitudes in the centre of Dublin to welcome him home from the Tour de France, where he had stood on the podium on the Champs Élysées with the paws of our Taoiseach all over him, claiming credit where none was due.
Again, Roche had performed his miracles despite being Irish, where his sport had had a storied past but no future at the time he emerged from the suburb of Dundrum, radiating class. It was the French on that occasion who supplied the training and the stage and whatever else you needed to get yourself up the Alpe d’Huez and into the yellow jersey.
But usually it was Johnny England who made our sporting wishes come true. Whether we liked it or not, the English first division had for decades been regarded as the natural destination of the most talented Irish ball-players. And support for English football ran deep in the cities of Dublin and Cork and the garrison towns too, and beyond — I grew up in the garrison town of Athlone in the 1970s, when almost everyone in my school had a natural affinity with Leeds or Liverpool or Man Utd.
But the country lads weren’t exactly immune to the attractions of association football either. What Jack did, with the results he achieved, was the popularisation of football in Ireland, beyond this hard core of aficionados which had always existed. And in so doing, with the primitive style which he favoured, he alienated the football men, the people who had always loved the game and kept it going.
Jack certainly didn’t bring football to a new level in Ireland, at least not in a good way, but he brought the popularity of football to a level whereby Gaelic matches were cancelled because they clashed with World Cup matches and English football, as represented by the Premier League, has arguably become our de facto national sport.
You could suggest that the GAA has obvious merits as a ‘community’ organisation, but equally, on the sporting side, it actually demands a lot less of its followers than the English game. A Kerryman would get away with not making a trip to Dublin until the All-Ireland final, an extraordinarily light load to bear, when you consider that the same Kerryman, if he supports Liverpool, would be giving his full attention to at least two games a week from the month of August through to the following May. And then there are the Leinster hurling finals with Croke Park only one-quarter full, because Kilkenny fans don’t suppose their team will be needing them yet.
Certainly the GAA provides a few big days out, generally in fine weather, but ‘the ban’ on its members from playing foreign games, a ban that was only lifted in 1971, showed that sport in itself was not necessarily the GAA’s main priority, that it was also a political and cultural movement which defined the nation in a narrow and discriminatory fashion, which was perversely against the national interest. The GAA concocted a kind of sporting version of the Iron Curtain, behind which the purity of the Gaelic project could be maintained without interference from the more decadent culture on the other side. And it banished all dissidents.
It was indeed one of Bill Graham’s more inspired moments when, in another context, he described the old Soviet Union as being ‘like an entire continent run by the GAA’. He was right at the time, but if Bill had lived to see the new Croke Park, with ‘soccer’ matches being played in it, he would doubtless have reviewed his position. He would have acknowledged that like the Soviet Union, eventually the GAA had its glasnost and perestroika. And unlike the GAA, the Soviet Union could only manage it with a President who was blind drunk most of the time.
And there was always the amateur ethos, a positive off-shoot of this generally twisted old attitude. It can be regarded as Paddy’s special contribution to sport in a world mad for money. Paddy can be in Sydney or Chicago looking at the All-Ireland final in which none of the stars are being paid a weekly wage, and he can be thinking: we are indeed a great sporting nation. That’s the ‘big ego’ bit there. But there is also a little voice which nags at him, a voice reminding him that this is, after all, an exclusively Irish affair, and that if these guys are as great as they’re cracked up to be, they’d surely be across in England playing the old garrison game, making millions.
That’s the ‘low self-esteem’ bit.
Like, we may be a great sporting nation, blah blah, but are we actually any good? And if we are, how can we tell if we never compete with people from other countries?
Gaelic games were at once a comfort blanket and a source of insecurity at the time of Euro 88. They allowed Paddy to demonstrate many of the things that he did very well. But was sport one of these things? There had been a few iconic individuals — Christy O’Connor the golfer; Ronnie Delany the runner; a few rugby players who may have been nominally Irish but who in truth belonged to an upper-middle-class élite which was beyond nationality; there were a number of phenomenal horses and jockeys and trainer Vincent O’Brien; Eddie Macken the show-jumper; Barry McGuigan and the boxers who always did their stuff at the Olympics; Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche ...
There was strength and depth, in Paddy’s sporting contribution, but alas, the one that really counted was the one that had always eluded us.
Association Football, the garrison game, is the one that counts. The rest is not exactly bullshit, but football is the one which gives everyone a chance, simply because it is played everywhere and it doesn’t require a set of golf clubs or a place at a fee-paying school, or a horse. And it certainly doesn’t require you to be from the 32 counties of Ireland, to know what’s going on.
Jack Charlton would become quite fond of the big days out at Croke Park, though, as a typical ‘gruff Yorkshireman’, he would bravely express reservations about any sport which is played in just one country in the entire world. He would also marvel at what he perceived to be the lowly status of football in Ireland, by comparison with these so-called national sports of Gaelic football and hurling and greyhound racing.
But here he revealed that perhaps he didn’t know us that well after all.
Which is reasonable enough, since we don’t know ourselves that well either. He didn’t seem to fully understand, as he sat on a fine day in Croke Park with the stadium full, enjoying the spectacle along with the great and the good and maybe even the followers of Kerry or Kilkenny who could now actually be arsed to come to Dublin in person, that it’s not like this all the time. That the Irish were probably as good at football as they were at any other sport. Perhaps better, when you reflect on the numbers of high-class individuals who had gone to England and had successful careers.
There was a man called Peter Molloy who owned a pub in Athlone when I was growing up, who had played for Aston Villa in the 1950s. He was part of a steady exodus of ‘good professionals’. And then there were players of the very highest order, such as John Giles, Jackie Carey, Liam Whelan, Tony Dunne, Paul McGrath, Ronnie Whelan, Brady and O’Leary and Stapleton. There were just never enough of them out there at the same time. And even if there had been, their best efforts would no doubt have been thwarted by the machinations of the FAI, the dysfunctional sporting body that other dysfunctional sporting bodies call ‘the galácticos’.
So Pad
dy was perhaps bringing a tad more of his native genius to this than Jack seemed to realise. And now it turned out that there was more of it out there than either of them had realised. Not that Jack ultimately gave a damn where the players were coming from as long as they did what they were told.
But for us, the ‘great-grandmother’ rule was about a lot more than fleshing out the squad with useful players. It was a thing of extraordinary psychic and cultural and historical significance. It had been born out of guilt and shame, this provision in the Irish constitution whereby the children of emigrants could become Irish citizens. It seemed to be saying to the ‘diaspora’ that we could do nothing for them except wave goodbye as they left the country, but if their children were mad enough to want to come back here, we wouldn’t keep them out. In fact, our citizenship laws back in the 1950s were partly influenced by the number of Irish women who were having illegitimate children in England because they were afraid to have them in Ireland.
And there was the ever-present hint of bullshit too, because we knew that the overwhelming majority of those who left Ireland would never return.
Many of them would get married happily or unhappily in England, but never unhappily enough, it seemed, to risk the boat back. Their children would include the likes of Johnny Rotten and Shane MacGowan and the Gallaghers of Oasis and all four members of The Smiths, who would enrich the cultural life of England while still maintaining a sort of Irishness. But on the whole, no good had come to the mother country from this long-standing arrangement, apart from the relief of getting rid of a few more unfortunates whom the Irish economy was unable to support.
And there was always America, which was now taking in the Irish in numbers which would ensure a full house for Christy Moore every night of the year, if he so wished.
But the emigration to England was always the most damning and the most disgraceful, not just because it involved the old enemy solving our problems, but because it was so near and yet so far. What kind of a hole were we running here that they would prefer to be sleeping rough in Camden Town than to be back in the old country for which they pined at closing time?
