Jack and Bobby Charlton were cut from different cloth but emotional ties endured
“Nobody can ever take this moment away from us,” Bobby Charlton told Jack as he dropped to his knees at Wembley, after the two became the first brothers to play, never mind win, a World Cup final. It was a moment that stretched credulity for siblings once expected by their father to follow him as miners, deep down in the Northumbrian earth, where the dust and explosions convinced the apprentice Jack that he would never venture inside a pit again. From the gloom of Linton Colliery to the glinting elegance of the Jules Rimet Trophy: it was a narrative arc that would cement the Charltons, for better or worse, as English football’s first family.
As personalities, they diverged more sharply than Roundheads and Cavaliers. While Bobby cultivated an image as the gentleman player, quiet by nature and scrupulously polite, Jack was one of life’s belligerents, unafraid of resolving on-pitch disputes the old-fashioned way. A memory endures of an interview earlier this year with Eddie Gray, his long-time team-mate at Leeds, who had photograph of “Big Jack” scattered around his living room.
Gray recalled with misty eyes the casual brutality of training sessions under Don Revie, where the elder Charlton would take lumps out of Billy Bremner in England versus Scotland tear-ups. It was a picture that called to mind the verdict upon Jack from Bobby Moore, who said: “I’d look at him and wonder how this big giraffe played football.”
The contrast was no mere quirk of circumstance. Where Jack was built in the mould of his four uncles, stout defenders all, not to mention his great-grandfather Jack “Warhorse” Milburn, Bobby reflected the lineage of his mother’s cousin, Jackie Milburn, a man immortalised in bronze for his feats at Newcastle. One was the pugnacious centre-half who derived no greater satisfaction than from a goalless draw, while the other was the striker with a silken touch, whose natural gift all but destined him to break records.
Throughout his life, Jack found the comparisons to Bobby invidious. His most succinct analysis came in an interview with Michael Parkinson in 1972, when he said: “I can’t play. I can stop other people from playing. But I can’t play. Bobby can play.”
But there was no denying the fascination the brotherly parallels brought. For a start, they did not even look alike, with Jack a gangly, spidery-legged oddity who resembled a cactus, in the eyes of his England rival Brian Labone, and Bobby six inches smaller but furnished with a winning blend of athleticism and strength. Their characters, likewise, were so polarised that it was hard to credit that they belonged to the same family. While Jack would famously grow louder the longer the night wore on, picking fights but seldom remembering them the next morning, Bobby was his diametric opposite, sensitive to perceived slights and trusting only a small coterie of friends.
Never should we underestimate, though, the strength of the ties that bind. The Charltons’ connection was hauntingly expressed when Jack, in one of the last interviews he gave in 2017, recounted how the family had heard of Bobby’s involvement in the Munich air disaster. Not even the passage of 59 years, or the early cruelties of dementia, could dilute the clarity of his flashbacks to that February night. “A woman came over from our neighbours, who had been listening to the news, saying that there were no survivors,” he said. “But behind her came a policeman, who was telling us, ‘Wait a minute, no, there are. Quite a few. And Bobby’s one of them.” At that point Jack looked skywards, unable to summon another word.
Blood, with this pair, was thicker than water. And yet a grasp of their conflicts is crucial to any understanding of how differently their careers were crafted. Where Jack was a renegade by instinct, Bobby was always the more plausible elder statesman, who for decades has been the English game’s most beloved grandee. Granted, 199 goals for Manchester United and 49 for England will do that for you, but Bobby’s status is also a by-product of his make-up: earnest, loyal, intensely guarded. It is a stretch, for example, to imagine him ever claiming, as Jack did, to “have a little black book” on his football enemies, a fictitious boast that effectively sunk his brother’s hopes of managing England.
Still, Jack became a more celebrated manager than Bobby ever did. While Jack acquired his coaching credentials before he turned 30, Bobby found himself ill-suited to the diplomatic juggling act that was the manager’s lot. Their CVs bear out their respective talents in this realm. Jack would go on to lead Ireland at two World Cups in 1990 and 1994, reaching the knockout phases both times, while Bobby endured an inglorious two-year stint at Preston.
Even in later life, they appeared hatched from separate universes, with Jack the gun-toting, cloth-capped creature of the country, and Bobby the natural denizen of the Old Trafford directors’ box in his perfectly-pressed suit. Tensions, sadly, would bubble to the surface. When their mother, Cissie, died in 1996, a wedge was driven between them as Jack accused Bobby of not visiting her before her death. He alleged that a clash between Cissie and Norma, Bobby’s wife, had created a lift, had created a rift, an accusation vigorously disputed by his brother in his biography 10 years later.
Bobby branded the argument “absolutely disgraceful”, saying: “My wife is a very strong character and does not suffer fools gladly. There was a clash and it just never went away, really. Jack came out in the newspapers saying things about my wife that were nonsense. My brother made a big mistake. I don’t understand why he did what he did.” But they met later at BBC Sports Personality of the Year, their language was not just conciliatory but forgiving. As Bobby accepted his lifetime achievement award, Jack said simply: “Bobby Charlton is the greatest player I’ve ever seen. My brother.” This was one relationship that no fraternal feuds could derail.
