Big Jack’s visit to Athboy put me under pressure

An after dinner speech by the former Ireland manager and Leeds and England legend in the Darnley Lodge Hotel was a dream assignment for JIMMY GEOGHEGAN until the gremlins struck...

It was an interview that was to turn out to be both memorable and forgettable all at the same time – at least for me. An interview with the great Jack Charlton, Ireland’s favourite Englishman; the man who had brought the national soccer team to heights we never thought possible.

The origins of the interview for me began one day when I received a phone call at my desk in the Meath Chronicle. It was an old school colleague on the line. He was involved in organising a fundraising event for the RNLI at the Darnley Lodge Hotel, Athboy. Somebody, it seemed, knew somebody who knew somebody else who had Jack Charlton’s phone number. The call was made to Big Jack. Would he like to be the main speaker at the event? Of course he would came the replay.

It was (I’m working from memory here) about 14, 15 years ago now. Jack, of course, was an old hand at after-dinner speeches. He was a very good, natural entertainer and he spent much of his time travelling around to clubs in England and Ireland regaling audiences with stories from his vast repertoire of tales gathered from a lifetime in football.

I had been asked if I would be interested in going over and writing a piece about the event and my colleague said he would arrange for Jack to sit down with me for 15 minutes or so and have a chat. Great, I thought.

Jack was after all a member of the wonderful Leeds United team of the late 1960s and ‘70s. The team of Johnny Giles, Billy Bremner, Eddie Grey, Norman ‘Bite Your Legs’ Hunter and many other heroes. That alone ensured the interview would be memorable for me, never mind all the Ireland stuff.

I had briefly met Jack before. It was after an international in Lansdowne Road in the summer of 1994. I had a press pass and was standing close to one of the old rugby clubhouses where post-match interviews were then held.

I was waiting for somebody outside afterwards when Big Jack, on his own, walked past on his way to the team bus. I said hello, he said hello and we starting chatting about the game, an informal chat. He put his arm around me as we walked towards the bus and the waiting players. He didn’t know me of course from Adam but he spoke to me like I was an old friend. It was an insight into the kind of man he was.

Then, years later, I got that call to attend the event in the Darnley Lodge. I set off that evening armed with my trusted dear old tape recorder. I put in new batteries just in case. I had the recorder for some years but it was just fine – or so I thought!

Anyway as I walked into the hotel Big Jack had just come down the stairs and was walking through the lobby to where the fundraiser was. I will never forget a woman, who had been sorting out something with a child, suddenly looking up and seeing this iconic figure in Irish cultural life walk past. The expression of amazement on her face was priceless.

I was brought over to Jack and, as promised, the two of us sat down to do the interview. However, just before it kicked off I felt this immediately disturbing, burning sensation when I put my hand in my pocket to take out my trusty old recorder. I felt furnace-like heat and a got this horrible, disturbing metallic smell. The batteries had fused together somehow and produced this intense heat and that nasty, sulphurous smell.

Here I was about to interview the most famous man in Irish sport and the bloody recorder was useless. Bugger, as Jack might have said himself.

Flustered, perturbed don’t go near to describing how I felt but I recovered enough composure to dig out my notebook and pen (thankfully I had brought some backup). I asked him some questions about managing Ireland and playing for Leeds Utd. Questions about his life since retiring from football. He said how he loved fishing along the Boyne with his great friend from Navan, Peter O’Reilly who wrote the book ‘The Rivers of Ireland’. I frantically scribbled down as much as I could but I missed stuff he said too. Jack did his after-dinner speech and I never saw him again.

I sought to construct an article out of my frantic scribblings for the next issue of the Meath Chronicle but the piece would have been a lot easier to write if I could have checked a recorded version. The gremlins were hard at work in the Darnley Lodge and their shenanigans ensured I will never forget the night when Big Jack appeared in Athboy – and my old recorder opted to give up the ghost.

Main Photo: Jack Charlton at the fundraiser in aid of the RNLI and Meath Specialist Palliative Care, in the Old Darnley Lodge Hotel, with Padraig Staunton (left) and Paddy Kerrigan