Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict. Leo McKinstry

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ