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About Bob70-71

October 2002 News

This is the latest news of all the players who appeared in the 1970-71

FKS Publishers Ltd Wonderful World of Soccer Stars Album

29 October

Royle Returns

Joe Royle has return to management after what he has termed his 'sabbatical', filli ng the post left by George Burley at Ipswich Town. The club are presently 17th after 14 matches, and the priority for Joe is to secure safety from relegation.

Joe is the club's 10th manager since the 2nd World War, and Ipswich managers have a terrific reputation. Two - Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson - went on to become England managers, and are responsible for England's two highest placings in the World Cup ! (Winners in '66 and 4th place in 1990 respectively.) As well as being knighted.

George Burley had been hailed a hero when he took Ipswich Town up to the Premiership and the club finished at an all time Premiership high in 5th position, reaching the UEFA Cup. But last season the club were relegated in 18th place, and though George was not sacked immediately, a poor start to this season, has brought in the changes.

Joe was last manager at Manchester City in 2000-2001, when unlike George, he WAS sacked after a Premiership relegation in 18th place. At that time, there was an air of disbelief that a manager with such a reputation at the club could be sacked, but the appointment of Kevin Keegan in his place was vindicated after the club ran away with the Division One Championship in the new season.

Joe has a two and half year contract and has not ruled out promotion in a play-off place, this season.

See BBC SPORT Football Teams Ipswich Town Royle eyes promotion
The Official Ipswich Town Football Club Web Site

25 October

Jack and Bobby

Thanks to Kåre B for spotting this article at Guardian Unlimited Football News Your questions answered Leo McKinstry. Leo McKinstry is the author of 'Jack and Bobby' a biography of the brothers Jack Charlton and Sir Bobby Charlton. This is only some edited highlights, so please follow the link for the full interview...

Your questions answered: Leo McKinstry

Monday October 21, 2002

Leo, do you know what Jack thought about the whole 'Leeds United on Trial' fiasco? Unusually for him he didn't seem to say much about it and he's not known for keeping his opinions to himself. Especially as he and O'Leary weren't exactly mates. And is it true about the black little book listing everyone who he thought he needed to get his own back on?

Mick McCarthy said to me that one of Jack's greatest virtues in retirement is his reluctance to make criticisms of the Irish set-up. And Jack seems to have adopted this approach with Leeds, even though, as you say, he has never been a great admirer or friend of O'Leary.

Indeed, he sent O'Leary into virtual exile in the late eighties, partly because he did not admire O'Leary's cultured playing style - preferring the more robust, less elegant McCarthy - and partly because he was determined to exert his authority when he took over as boss in 1986; the most effective way to do that was by dropping one of the star players.

On the question of Jack's famous "Black Book", this arose out of a interview that Jack gave in 1970 to Tyne Tees Television. Outlining the harsh realities of life as a professional footballer, he said that he had "a little book with players' names in it. If I get the chance to do them I will. I will make them suffer before I pack it in." So there's nothing new about Roy Keane, though the FA, after much huffing, treated Jack far more leniently.

In truth, though, Jack never had a physical book, just a number of vendettas against certain players. In subsequent years, he named three of them: Bertie Auld of Celtic, George Kirby of Southampton and John Morrissey, the Everton winger.

The great irony of this sorry affair was that Jack was far less dirty than many of the Leeds players of that era. He could not begin to compare with the likes of Bobby Collins, Billy Bremner, or John Giles. Peter Lorimer told me that Jack would often argue in the Leeds dressing about this: "He hated the dirty players, the ones who went over the top."

What did you make of the Channel 4 documentary on Jack and Bobby? Were you involved? Can you provide some tantalising anecdote that will prove To us, the discerning football biography shopper, that your book isn't just A rehash of well-trodden ground?

I was not involved with the Channel 4 documentary. I was asked to take part but I politely refused, largely because I was just at the beginning of my research.

I thought, however, that it was a solid, informative and well-researched programme which gave a good picture of the two brothers. My only small criticism was the lack of analysis about the family feud, which is crucial to their story.

I hope that my own book is not just a rehash of old stories. It has certainly not been received that way by reviewers. Brian Glanville, one of the most respected of all football writers, described it in the New Statesman as "one of the best football books ever written".

I interviewed almost 90 different people for the biography to get a real understanding of their lives, right back to childhood. I even managed to talk to two of Bobby's grammar-school teachers, who both said that they knew Bobby would make an England player the very first time they saw him perform. In contrast, as I reveal, Jack could not even get in the Ashington Junior team.

Because of the extent my research, I believe I have produced a wealth of interesting material about everything from the Munich air crash to Jack's politics. Some of the passages I was most pleased concerned Jack and Bobby's spells as club managers. I think I show convincingly the reasons why Bobby was hopeless when he was in charge of Preston - Mark Lawrenson told me he was so nervous when reading out the team that his hand would start to shake, while I have a host of anecdotes about Jack's eccentricities at Sheffield Wednesday, like the time he turned up at 7.40pm to give the pre-match team talk, forgetting t

Who hated whom in the Manchester United dressing room? And did Bobby, Denis Law and George Best ever get annoyed at the fact that they had to play next to eight mediocre cloggers?

It is amazing that Manchester United won so much in the sixties when they had such poor team spirit. As Noel Cantwell, one of the stars of the team, said to me: "It was a strange dressing room, when you think about it. You'd be standing, stripping and talking to people every day, maybe five days a week and half of them did not get on very well together."

Bobby, Denis and George were never close, particularly in their later years. Denis thought Bobby was over-rated and, as a proud Scot (he once said that 30th July 1966 was "the blackest day of my life"), he disliked the way Bobby had come to symbolise English success.

George Best found Bobby dour and aloof, while Bobby hated Best's lack of professionalism. So bitter was the Best-Charlton feud in the early seventies that they would not even pass the ball to each other. And this sort of animosity could be seen throughout United under Busby: Bobby thought that Pat Crerand was a loudmouth and Crerand regarded Bobby as an "imposter".

Bill Foulkes and Maurice Setters, for instance, were widely seen as bullies. John Giles and David Herd could not stand each other. The striker, Albert Quixall, was despised, partly because of his obscene habit of defecating into other players' boots. Harry Gregg, the goalkeeper, was feared as a maniac; he once sank his teeth into Shay Brennan on the training ground.

Though Best, Charlton and Law formed perhaps the best forward line in the history of British soccer, I think it is a bit unfair to describe the rest of the 1960s United side as "cloggers". Noel Cantwell, David Sadler and David Herd were sophisticated players, while Harry Gregg and Alex Stepney were brilliant keepers. And though the likes of Setters, Foulkes and Stiles certainly did not have the grace of Bobby, their defensive and ball-winning skills were vital.

In fact, Bobby was a huge admirer of Maurice Setters and had him as best man at his wedding in 1961. And Nobby Stiles was crucial to Bobby's success with United and England. Here is George Cohen on the subject. "It's not recognised that Nobby was a very good distributor of the ball, but he fed Bobby Charlton time and time again. Bobby could see Nobby go into a tackle, was confident he'd come out with the ball, moved into space and Nobby would find him. That was a very good partnership."

Did one of the Charltons steal that bracelet before Mexico 70? We all know that Bobby Moore (God rest his soul) wasn't responsible. But he still took the fall. A hero in every sense. Do we have to wait for the guilty brother to pass on before the tawdry details of this coward and thief are revealed?

I'm pretty sure that neither of the Charlton brothers was involved in the theft of the bracelet. There is no evidence to support any such claim.

It has often been said that the alleged theft was all part of a set-up by the Columbian authorities to blackmail England's two biggest stars, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton. But the reality may be somewhat different.

Shortly before he died, Bobby Moore admitted that one of the younger England players may have been guilty. "Perhaps one of the younger lads with the squad did something foolish, a prank with unfortunate consequences." I have had a name suggested to me but I fear the libel law prevents me spelling it out.

Why exactly did the two brothers fell out? And is the schism now too wide to heal?

The central theme of my book is that the two brothers are completely different personalities and have never been close, even in their earliest childhood years. Bobby has always been shy, reserved, diplomatic, well-behaved, while Jack is famously blunt, gregarious, rebellious and open. Everything about them is different, as in their politics: Bobby is conservative, Jack an outspoken socialist. So, even without any personal animosity, there would have been a chasm between them.

But the feud arose over a very specific issue. When the two brothers were boys, Jack always felt slightly excluded because he saw that Bobby was his mother's favourite.

This was because Cissie Charlton, who came from famous north-east soccer family (all four of her brothers played professional football and her cousin was the great Jackie Milburn), was mad about the sport. So when she realized that her second son, Bobby, had a huge natural talent - unlike Jack - she was overjoyed, and spent hours working with Bobby on his game.

Bobby began to drift away from the family when he went to Manchester but the real rift came in 1961 when he married Norma Ball, a glamorous woman from a Manchester fashion agency. Norma and Cissie Charlton could not stand each other and Norma never felt welcomed into the Charlton's Ashington home. Bobby, understandably, took his wife's side and had little to do with his mother after his marriage. Indeed, Cissie barely saw Bobby's two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea.

Jack, who had become much closer to his mother, came increasingly to resent Bobby's attitude towards Cissie, which he saw as amounting to neglect. He was particularly angry that Bobby did not visit her much when she was in an nursing home towards the end of her life.

The feud came out into the open when Cissie died in 1996. Jack publicly laid into his brother. "I'll never forgive him. We've never been further apart than we are now. I just don't want to know him." But since then, the rift has healed a little and Bobby and Jack are on speaking terms again. Still, you would hardly think they were brothers.

Buy Jack & Bobby from Amazon.co.uk

12 October

What a Wonderful World !

Whilst agreeing that the World can be wonderful, I'm not entirely sure I want hear a Bob 70-71 Star to sing about it... Last month this site reported Ron Atkinson's participation on a new album (see news), well a few more details have emerged.

Called 'In a League of Their Own', it is given a track by track review by Paul Connolly in today's 'The Times' newspaper. In fact, Big Ron has three tracks on it, 'That's Life', 'Come Fly With Me', and 'When the Rain Begins'. What I didn't know was that Alan Mullery also has two tracks on the album, 'What a Wonderful World' and 'Pennies From Heaven'. Heavens !

Cartoonist Tony Husband jokes that the album is surely as surely can be destined for the bargain bin, when that moment comes I may well do a review of the album myself. Meanwhile, Connolly natrually slates the album, but the closest he gives to a thumbs up is to ex-Leeds United ironic hero, Chris Kamara, who covers the Van Morrison classic 'Brown Eyed Girl'.

Of further interest to this site is a track from the ubiquitous Gabby Logan - daughter of 70-71 Star, Terry Yorath (Leeds United). Gabby duets with jocular ex-Rangers star and co-presenter of Monday's 'The Premiership', Ally McCoist. Their song is the appropriately titled 'Somthin' Stupid'.

The Times article features a picture of Alan Mullery sat at the piano with Chris Kamara and Ally McCoist, and points out that only some of the money goes to charity - which means this project was seriously intended to make the stars money ! Other stars on the cd are Frank Sinclair, Matt Jansen, and Dion Dublin - who does a sax solo.

11 October

Computer Games

Total Club Manager 2003

(Picture from www.game.uk.com)

Good to see two new computer football management games feature Bob 70-71 Stars.

A true life knight, Sir Bobby Robson is the face on the cover of 'Total Club Manager 2003' made by EA Sports and officially licensed by the FA Premier League. 'Welcome to the hottest seat in sport' goes its logo. Curiously, adverts featuring a ponderous 69 year old Sir Bobby do not look at all out of place in teen computer game shops and magazines.

See www.totalclubmanager.com
and GAME.uk.com

Meanwhile, a rival game by 'FourFourTwo' magazine ( www.442.rivals.net ) is promoted by a quote from another senior Bob 70-71 star, Ell Tel - Terry Venables (QPR). "It's as realistic a game as you want it to be," quoth he.

The advert in this month's magazine features a still from the game with the daughter of 70-71 Star, Terry Yorath (Leeds United), namely Gabby Logan. Computer simulated evenings with Gabby seems like a great idea to me - but don't quote me on that, her husband is a rugby player and my wife might over hear.

The game appears to be some kind of colaboration between FourFourTwo:Touchline Passion Software and SCI Games Limited, and was developed by Bubbal Systems Limited.

See GAME.UK.COM

See more October 2002 news at the following ...

Click here for the latest Soccer headlines www.bobdunning.net