Jack Charlton's Republic of Ireland at USA ‘94 and their disputed Irishness

As recently as 2015, when debate was raging over whether Jack Grealish would choose to represent England or the Republic of Ireland at senior level, former Ireland goalkeeper Shay Given made the remark: “He has an affiliation with the country, it’s not like Cascarino or something.” Tony Cascarino, the English-born striker who made 88 appearances for the Republic between 1985 and 1999, had this to say in return.

“I played with Shay Given for Ireland for three and a half years. He never once questioned my Irishness then, so I am surprised he’s done so now.

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“Because I have an Italian surname, I think I am an easy target when people discuss players born outside Ireland who played for the team – but I would expect more from Shay.

“I strongly resent Shay’s suggestion that I had no affiliation with Ireland… He should check his facts, because I was not only proud to play for Ireland, but qualified to do so. I take it quite personally when people call that into question.”

Disputed Irishness

This is not the only time that one of the players who represented Ireland during the Jack Charlton era has seen his Irishness disputed. Cascarino is a special case in that he called himself “a fraud” and “a fake Irishman” in his autobiography Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino, this before it was clarified that he was indeed eligible to play for the boys in green. The confusion came about because, having qualified for Ireland through his mother, he had found out in the middle of his international career that she had been adopted by an Irish family and had no genetic ties to Ireland. “I was petrified because I had been playing for Ireland all of this time and now it turned out I had no blood link to the country,” he later wrote, though it turned out that adoption laws covered this eventuality and Cascarino had as much right to play for Ireland as any of his teammates.

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Cascarino certainly had a more Irish upbringing than most other children raised in England. “I grew up in a very Irish family in south London, going to mass with my grandad every Sunday and drinking black and tans,” he told Pog Mo Goal in 2012. John Aldridge, another member of Jack Charlton’s Ireland set-up who has often seen his affinity with Ireland brought into question, had some similar reflections on his cultural Irishness in his autobiography. Born and raised on Merseyside, he claimed to have grown up in a household which supported Ireland over England and added: “I might have been born in England but I felt as Irish as any of the five million or so who lived in the Republic.”

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Mick McCarthy, another English-born teammate of Cascarino and Aldridge who would go on to manage Ireland at the 2002 World Cup, had his own characteristically forthright take on why so many of his contemporaries have been forced to defend their heritage. “Ireland only get bashed with the ‘non-Irish’ stick by the teams they’ve beaten, strangely enough!” he told Paddy Power in 2016. There may well be an element of truth in this, with the Jack Charlton era one of unprecedented success for Ireland. The greatest of those successes came at USA ‘94, where Ireland briefly threatened to be genuine world beaters.

‘The Granny Rule’

England were one of the teams that Charlton’s Ireland defeated during their golden era, and one of the main antagonists when it came to challenging their heritage. England fans, players and journalists were keen to nettle their Irish counterparts over their supposedly tenuous football credentials, with Cascarino saying in his interview with Pog Mo Goal: “I remember Dennis Wise saying ‘One England cap is worth 50 Ireland caps.’ All I’d say was ‘It’s more than 20 years since you’ve beaten us.’”

Cascarino would go on to score against England in a Euro ‘92 qualifier at Lansdowne Road, extending that run even further. Though it ended 1-1, he said of that goal: “To score against England was extra special… and to go into the [Aston Villa] dressing room a few days later wearing my Ireland jersey was fantastic.” Ireland’s most famous result against England had come four years previous at Euro ‘88, this in Charlton’s first major tournament as manager. The man who had been an integral part of the England side which won the 1966 World Cup final masterminded a tight victory over his compatriots, with Glasgow-born Ray Houghton – another of Ireland’s overseas contingent – scoring the only goal of the game.

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By the time USA ‘94 came around, England could only watch on enviously as Ireland jetted off across the Atlantic. Where England had failed to qualify under Graham Taylor – with The Sun cruelly calling him “a turnip” and merging his face with said root vegetable under the headline “That’s Yer Allotment” when he finally resigned – Charlton steered Ireland through a difficult qualifying group with only one defeat along the way. With Northern Ireland in the same group, the players faced more ad hominem attacks with regards to their backgrounds. Before a venomous match at Windsor Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland manager Billy Bingham had called them “a bunch of mercenaries” and said “it is our intention to stuff the Republic.”

Charlton had certainly cast a wide net in an attempt to find players who were eligible for Ireland. This was satirised as ‘The Granny Rule’ and ‘Find An Irishman’ policy on both sides of the Irish Sea. Aldridge offered an eloquent response to Bingham before the match, stating: “My commitment to Ireland is total, my pedigree is Irish and so is my patriotism and it hurts when anyone questions it. We are all Irish whether we play for the North or the Republic, and just because we speak with a Liverpool accent or a Manchester one makes no difference. When I was first picked it was not pound signs that flashed before my eyes but the shamrock.” The Republic escaped with a 1-1 draw which sent them to the World Cup, while Northern Ireland finished fourth in the group and Bingham’s crowing proved to be short-lived.

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The national team had not been entirely accepted even in the Republic at this point. Ireland has a difficult relationship with football, which has historically been associated with British colonialism and seen as a “garrison game” owing to its popularity with British troops. As the famously acerbic Eamon Dunphy put it in the lead up to USA ‘94: “Those who have maliciously and persistently muttered about Irishmen with strange accents will doubtless surface again in the weeks ahead. There is one in every town and village, in every bar. Wherever a majority gather to celebrate the substantial achievements of this Irish team, a minority, vocal and often unduly influential, the Irish teacher, the really Catholic priest, the True Gael politician, will lurk, nursing a grudge about ‘foreign games’ and ‘mercenaries’.”

So, along with Cascarino, Aldridge, Houghton and McCarthy – the last of whom had hung up his boots two years before USA ‘94 – Phil Babb, Andy Townsend and Terry Phelan were also the butt of jokes for having been born in Lambeth, Maidstone and Manchester respectively. Dunphy’s response surely made even the loudest naysayer pause for thought. “Reason is the antidote,” Dunphy wrote. “For those who argue that Houghton, Babb, Townsend and Phelan are not Irishmen, citing as evidence the colour of their skin or the dialect they speak, the answer is that emigration is a fact of life on this small island. Phil Babb’s mother was from Carlow. Roy Houghton’s father is a Donegal man. Andy Townsend’s grandmother came from Castleisland in County Kerry. Terry Phelan’s mother was a Sligo woman.”

Ascendant Ireland

With Gaelic games and rugby so culturally dominant in Ireland, many have cited Charlton’s brand of football as making the old “garrison game” feel more Irish. As Barney Ronay wrote in his book The Manager: “Charlton made you feel vaguely proud of his abrasive, rousing, semi-Gaelic football, carried along by the underdog’s broad-shouldered optimism.” Some have even associated the feelgood factor of the Charlton era and Ireland’s newfound pride in its national side with the country’s economic boom and the birth of the ‘Celtic Tiger’. This may seem like abject romanticism for the more pragmatic heads out there, but either way Charlton gave Ireland a football team it could fall in love with.

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In his Sports Illustrated essay “Here Come The Lads”, published just before USA ‘94 began in earnest, Alexander Wolff wrote: “Soccer carries no stigma anymore… now there’s a soccer strain in Irish culture. Not 25 years ago an Irishman had to forswear soccer to prove his Irishness. Now, as the country takes its place in the European Community, the game is a screen on which Irish everywhere can project their nomadic sense of nationhood. After all, you can’t beat Holland in hurling or Germany in Gaelic.”

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So the Jack Charlton era was somehow both endearingly unpretentious in style and dazzlingly global in substance. The latter was down to the exceptional results which saw Ireland qualify for several major tournaments, aided by the second and third-generation emigrants and players drawn from the Irish diaspora. “Every player we brought into the squad considered himself Irish,” Charlton said, not that there was much doubting the commitment of his English-born players once they took to the field. “Had it not been for the economic circumstances which forced their parents or grandparents to emigrate, they would have been born and reared in Ireland. Should they now be victimised and denied their heritage because of the whims of journalists? I think not.”

The American dream

Having failed to qualify for a single major tournament before Charlton was appointed manager, Ireland made it to Euro ‘88 – going out at the group stage despite beating England – and then reached the quarter-finals of Italia ‘90 despite failing to win a single game in normal time. While their no-nonsense approach was criticised by the purists, Eamon Dunphy among them, Charlton’s tactical pragmatism combined with the team’s gradual accumulation of talent saw Ireland compete with even the most storied opposition.

At Italia ‘90, only a heartbreaking goal from Salvatore Schillaci sent Ireland out against the hosts at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. Though the boys in green missed out on Euro ‘92 despite going unbeaten in qualifying, the build-up to USA ‘94 saw them triumph over Holland, Bolivia and Germany – an incredible run which England fans could only dream about. Irish confidence had never been higher and football fever gripped a nation which had not so long ago been somewhere between apathetic and contemptuous towards the game. Meanwhile, in stark contrast to their English counterparts, Ireland supporters gained a reputation for being likeable, up for a laugh and true to the slogan on their T-shirts: “WIN OR LOSE WE’RE ON THE BOOZE”.

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Drawn against Mexico, Italy and Norway at the group stage, progression to the knockouts seemed like a tall order for the Irish. In their first game against Italy at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey, however, Charlton’s side nabbed one of the most famous results in Ireland’s history. In a stadium which was disproportionately in favour of the Republic – many Irish fans acquired tickets on the black market while Irish Americans travelled down in numbers – the boys in green got revenge for Italia ‘90 with a 1-0 win over the Azzurri. Houghton, who scored the only goal of the match, told The42 in 2014: “I remember going on the coach to the game and seeing the number of Irish fans en route. There was a real party atmosphere. There’s nothing like it when you know people are shouting you on, that they’ve got your back and they’re supporting you.

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“The fans were buying the tickets from anyone and everyone. It was just an amazing feeling when you came out and saw all the tricolours, the scarves and banners and shirts. I think it surprised the Italian team. It was a real boost.”

Not only did a Glaswegian score the winner for Ireland, a lad born in Ealing was their best defender. Paul McGrath, then a stalwart for Aston Villa, was credited with snuffing out the threat of Roberto Baggio at a time when the Juventus forward was considered one of the most dangerous attackers in the game. So a team drawn from the Irish diaspora and cheered on by fans hailing from Bray and Boston, Navan and New York, defeated one of the best sides in world football and the eventual finalists. It was their crowning glory and, for a few days at least, Ireland were living the dream.

The dream dies, the legacy lives on

In the end, USA ‘94 was a fantastic tournament for Ireland but left many feeling that they could have gone even further. Defeat to Mexico in the sweltering heat of the Citrus Bowl in Florida was followed by a goalless draw with Norway, which was enough to get them out of the group. They met old foes Holland in the Round of 16 and were undone by goals from Dennis Bergkamp and Wim Jonk, with an unusually flat performance ruthlessly exploited by an excellent Dutch side. “Ireland’s World Cup ended that day in Giants Stadium,” Roy Keane would later say in his autobiography – a typically uncharitable judgement but one which is at least insightful in a way.

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The achievements of the Charlton era had to come to an end at some point. On failing to qualify for Euro ‘96, he resigned his position and handed over the reigns to former disciple Mick McCarthy. Nonetheless, he had brought together a team which reflected all the complexities of national identity and turned them into bona fide heroes. He gave Ireland a national side which, for the first time, was successful on the world stage – a side made up of Irishmen, adopted Irishmen and second, third and fourth-generation emigrants, which reflected all the historic, economic and social complexities of Irish identity.

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There are no doubt still those who question the credentials of Charlton’s Ireland side, citing failed pursuits of players who went on to represent England or showed little interest in the Republic. These were the inevitable outliers in a strategy which helped to bring the team so much success. As for those born outside of Ireland who did want to represent the Republic, however, Mick McCarthy deserves the last word on their sense of self. “When people questioned me about my Irishness I used to say to them: ‘If you left Ireland to live abroad and had children, and your son was good enough to represent Ireland in any sport, would you think he is Irish and able to play for them?’ Every single person would give me the same answer. Of course they’d let their son play for Ireland, and that’s exactly what I did.

“My mother-in-law is 93 years old and originally from the Curragh in Kildare, and she sums it up perfectly. There are men from Ireland and then there are Irish men. That’s the way it is.”