Gaffers by Trevor Keane Read Free Book Online Page 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

3
CHARLIE HURLEY
    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,