Gaffers (7 page)

Kevin Keelan was Noel’s first signing for the New England Tea Men and he has a huge amount of respect for his old manager and friend: ‘Noel was an old friend of John Bond’s, and he came to Norwich to talk to me. I had been at Norwich for seventeen years at that stage, and I was due a testimonial. John told me that Noel wanted to sign me for the Tea Men, so I met with Noel and had a chat with him about the League and what he wanted from the team and from me. By the end of it I had committed myself to them for three years, but I also decided to stay on with Norwich. I played in the NASL for three years, during which time I commuted from the USA to England. I played football for twelve months a year. They were hard times but good times.

‘One time, I finished the season with New England, got on a plane on the Thursday and arrived in England to play for
Norwich against Everton on the Saturday. We won the game 3–1, but at the end of it I was on my knees.

‘Before I went to the Tea Men, I had a call from George Best, who wanted me to come out to the LA Aztecs, but I decided I was better off where I was at the time. Then Noel came in and made me an offer. I remember we played the Aztecs when I got over there, and after the game we were in a bar having a chat when a young lad came over to me and said that Mr Cantwell wanted to talk to me in the back bar. I headed in there and there was Noel and Besty having a good chat. George was saying how he had tried to sign me, while Noel was saying how good I was. It made for good listening, but I think that if I had gone to the Aztecs, I wouldn’t have got the extra few years out of my career.

‘There was a lot of travelling in the NASL. It was not like with Norwich, where the furthest you went was the north-east of England. In the States we played in Detroit, LA, Portland and San José. We’d be on road trips for a week at a time. It was tough, but it was great fun. I saw places I’d never seen before. The League was an exciting thing to be a part of. There were some top players from England and elsewhere playing at that time.

‘He was a great man, though. He enjoyed a good rapport with the players, and the training was exactly the same as it was in England, so it was of a good standard. He worked great with Dennis Viollet. They really bounced off each other and had a good relationship. Like all managers, however, you didn’t want to go near him if the team lost. He hated to lose. That said, you could have a chat with him about the game over a beer, and he would tell you exactly where it had gone wrong.’

After some good times in America, it was tragedy that eventually brought Cantwell back to England when his only son died in a car crash at the tender age of twenty-two. While he never got over that loss, he managed to regain some semblance of normality when he returned once more to manage Peterborough in 1986, his second spell as a manager there. Cantwell remained in this role until he became general manager on 12 July 1988.

After he quit football, he settled into life in Peterborough and ran the New Inn pub for a number of years before he finally retired in 1999. He came back into football during the England reign of Sven-Göran Eriksson, who invited Noel to go scouting for him and to report on some of England’s up-and-coming players. Sadly, Noel Cantwell died on 8 September 2005, after a battle against cancer, at the age of seventy-three.

NOEL CANTWELL’S CLUB MANAGERIAL HONOURS RECORD:

Fourth Division Championship: Peterborough United 1974

NOEL CANTWELL’S IRELAND RECORD:

Total number of games in charge: 3
Total number of wins: 1 (ratio 33.33%)
Total number of draws: 1 (ratio 33.33%)
Total number of losses: 1 (ratio 33.33%)
Biggest win: 2–0
v.
Czechoslovakia
Biggest defeat: 2–1
v
. Czechoslovakia
Longest run without defeat: 2 games

Charlie Hurley was nicknamed ‘the King’ and for good reason. A colossus of a man, he is regarded as one of the giants of English and Irish football, and to this day he is revered by Sunderland, the club to whom he gave the majority of his career. Hurley was a natural leader who led by example and demanded that others give the same commitment that he himself gave on the pitch. Such was the impact that he made on Tyne and Wear with Sunderland that he was named their player of the century. In his day he was a good, old-fashioned centre-half who played with his heart and soul and became a legend for whatever team he turned out for, whether that was Millwall, Sunderland, Bolton or the country of his birth, Ireland. Hurley is remembered as a player who never shirked the challenge.

At a time when change in Irish football was imminent, Noel Cantwell and Charlie Hurley were the last men to fall under the influence of the FAI committees. The history books do not really include them as managers, but from Johnny Carey’s last game in charge in February 1967, to the appointment of Mick Meagan
in 1969, there was a period when Noel Cantwell and Charlie Hurley were co-managers of the national team for two games, with the FAI eventually opting to give the sole responsibility to Cantwell. When he stepped down from his duties as national team manager due to his commitments with Coventry, Hurley stepped into the breach from 18 November 1967, when the FAI committee officially named him as the man to look after the team on match days. He was technically the player-coach during that time, and he took control of the team for a total of six matches, eventually calling time on both his Ireland playing career and his Ireland coaching career at the same time, in June 1969.

EARLY CAREER, MILLWALL AND THE KING

Hurley was born in Cork in 1936 but emigrated with his father and mother to England when he was still a young child. Growing up in Essex, he made his name with his local school team, Blacksmiths Lane, with whom he was captain and played outside-right. Then, having finished school, he was playing for Rainham, his local youth team, when he was spotted by a Millwall scout. As is so often the case, the scout on the day, Bill Voisey, had actually gone to the match to check out a player from the opposition, but the game finished with Charlie signing amateur forms with the London club.

Charlie made his debut for the Millwall reserves against Fulham and after the game was asked to join the grounds staff at Millwall to earn an apprenticeship. He decided to decline the offer and instead completed a tool-making apprenticeship, but the club were not to be deterred in their determination to have
Hurley on the playing staff and, at the age of seventeen, his professional career did get going when he signed for Millwall, breaking into the team that same year, 1953. The irony of his breakthrough, though, was that it came at the expense of another Irishman, Gerry Bowler, who had represented Northern Ireland on three occasions.

At that time Millwall were a Third Division team, and the season before Hurley’s debut they had finished runners-up in the League. In those days the runners-up spot did not guarantee you promotion, so Millwall had to rebuild and entered a period of change, one that benefited the young Cork man, who became a permanent fixture in the side.

After four years with Millwall, and over 100 appearances, Sunderland, whose manager Alan Brown had been tipped off to his potential by a former Millwall manager, came calling for the then twenty-one-year-old. A fee of £18,000 was agreed with Millwall, and a prince was about to grow up and become a king.

Sunderland at that time were undergoing a new chapter in their history. In 1957 the club had been relegated from Division One for the first time and had also been fined and their board suspended for making payments to players above the maximum agreed amount. Those events rocked English football to its core and pushed the club into a period of turmoil. Their relegation meant that after sixty-eight years in England’s top flight they were in Division Two, hardly the place for a young, ambitious centre-half who was already beginning to make a name for himself.

Although we now know that his time with Sunderland was the making of Hurley, his first two appearances were the stuff of nightmares. A 7–0 defeat to Blackpool that included an own
goal, followed by a 6–0 defeat to Burnley, would have seen many older, more experienced men crumble. But to be fair to both the player and manager who signed him, they stuck with it.

Hurley suffered his fair share of heartbreak with Sunderland, as defeat on the last day of the season twice cost them the chance of promotion to the top flight, and it was not until 1964 that Sunderland would reclaim their place in the top tier of English football, ending a six-year absence. The previous season the club had come within one game of promotion to the First Division, requiring only a draw in their final game against promotion rivals Chelsea, who had another game left to play, to secure promotion. However, they were defeated, and Chelsea went on to win their last match and take their place in the First Division. However, there were no mistakes in 1964 when Charlie skippered the side and they finished runners-up behind Charlton Athletic, thereby winning the second promotion spot.

That promotion-winning season was also extremely pleasing for Hurley on a personal front, as he was runner-up in the Football Writers’ Player of the Year award, just missing out to Bobby Moore. Hurley’s stature in the game was growing, and his strength at the back for Sunderland was one of the key factors in the club’s return to the top division.

Norman Howe, a close friend of Hurleys, is the vice-president of the Sunderland Former Players Association. He remembers the promotion-winning team of 1964 as one of the greatest in Sunderland’s history: ‘They played at Roker Park in those days, and it was a fortress. They went eighteen months without losing there at one stage. The players were highly regarded up in Sunderland, but they and Charlie never let it go to their heads.

‘I remember they would often have their lunch in the local hotel before a game and then cross the public park to Roker Park. The fans would stroll with them. Then, once the players got there, it would be a case of, “See ya now. We’re off to get changed.” It’s all very different nowadays, of course. There was so much interaction in those days.

‘Charlie is a very good friend of mine, and I can tell you one of the most striking things about him is that he is very modest. He never looked for glory. I remember one time we were out in Sunderland for a meal and a drink, and people were clamouring to see him. He did all the signing the fans wanted, but then instead of staying with the young fans he went over to these three old men and sat down with them and chatted away and had a drink with them. Later he said to me, “See them? They are yesterday’s men. They have worked all their lives and supported the club. It was nice to go over and chat to them and cheer them up.” That’s the way he is.

‘Charlie always attracted attention wherever he went in Sunderland. Even now when he comes up to Sunderland it’s the same. About three years ago he came up and we went for a game of golf. Word got around that Charlie was about. By the time we reached the clubhouse there was a queue of people looking to shake his hand, get some photos and ask for his autograph. Some of them were teenagers who would never have even seen him play.

‘He has a great sense of humour, too, and loves a good joke. One time we were in the pub together and this gentleman came and joined us. He shook Charlie’s hand and asked who I was. Charlie replied that I was his brother Chris. The bloke said it was lovely to meet me, and we got to chatting. He asked me if
I had ever played football. I thought I would get my own back, so I said to him, “Charlie, why don’t you tell my story?”

‘Without missing a beat, Charlie broke into this story about how we had grown up in London and money had been very tight. “Chris was actually a better footballer than me,” he said, “but money was tight, and we could only afford one set of boots and kit, so Chris stood to one side and let me be the footballer.” Well, the gentleman shook my hand and wouldn’t let it go. He told me how much he admired me for what I had done. It was all very much in jest, and we couldn’t keep it going for too long, but we had a good laugh with that one.’

Charlie Hurley, it seems, was a character on and off the pitch. In the late 1960s, alongside goalkeeper Jimmy Montgomery, Len Ashurst, Martin Harvey and Jim McNab, he formed one of the most notable and most settled back fives in Sunderland’s history. Hurley was a rock-solid central defender, who, despite being renowned for his heading ability, did not get his first goal for Sunderland until 1960, scoring in a 1–1 draw with Sheffield United. In all he scored forty-three goals for the club.

Charlie would play anywhere his team wanted him. In fact, in one match, against Manchester United in November 1966, he made an appearance in goal after England keeper Jimmy Montgomery had to leave the game because of an injury sustained in the first half.