Forget honesty of effort, forget doing your stuff. The first time I became aware of Johnny Giles, he was doing a rabona.
Nobody called it that, not at the time he did it in March 1972 nor whatever year in the 1980s it was when I came to see it on video. But he pulled it out, insouciant as you like, in a famous passage of play during a Leeds game when they were 7-0 up on Southampton.
Even now, when you look it up on YouTube, the astonishing thing is that none of the Southampton players went over and buried him for it. Leeds were, to put a Fifa-approved technical term on it, prick-acting about – Billy Bremner was doing keepy-uppies and back-heeling passes for no reason other than to embarrass the opposition. Given that it would have taken the wielding of a chainsaw to be sent off in those days, it was always a wonder Gilsey didn’t get a slap for his messing.
God alone knows why we had it on video. Ours was not a Leeds United house, nor anything close to it. But it was there, along with footage from the 1984 Uefa Cup final between Spurs and Anderlecht – again, no idea why, for we were even less of a Spurs house. I suspect it was more that we were a house where a football-obsessed little boy lived and so any small bit of it that was on, somebody hit record.
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So that was my introduction to Johnny Giles. And for years, it was the only thing I knew about him. I was too young to have seen him play and his time as Ireland manager predated me too. I knew nothing of his attempts to make Shamrock Rovers a superpower and what I now know as his reputation for being a taciturn old grouch with the media couldn’t have made less of an impression.
All I knew was that he was adored by old men (back then, anybody over 19 was old). That, and the one time I’d seen him do anything with a ball, he’d waited for it to bobble over to him on a cabbage field of a pitch and calmly flicked his left boot behind his right ankle to whip it down the line to Allan Clarke.
“Poor Southampton don’t know what day it is,” gurgled Barry Davies on commentary. “Every man jack of this Leeds side is turning it on. Oh, look at that! It’s almost cruel.” (The ‘Oh, look at that!’ was Gilesy’s flick).
Later, when I’d see him on RTÉ as a pundit, I initially found it impossible to square the circle. Hang on, so this guy who is forever preaching simplicity and not forcing it and doing the right thing, this is the same dude that’s in the Leeds-Southampton video? How can that be?
Eventually, I realised I was comparing two different people. Johnny Giles was the footballer, the guy in the number 10 shirt who could do anything with the ball. John Giles was the chap on TV in the sensible V-neck, sitting there impassively as the mad fella on one side of him shook his fist at the world and the mischievous Corkman on the other side twinkled away in the presenter’s chair.
My generation missed out on Johnny Giles. We got John Giles instead. And it was easy to feel shortchanged about that. Instinctively, plenty of us wondered what all the fuss was about. But over time, probably because we got older and (marginally) less dumb, it became clear.
Eamon Dunphy kept going on about what a genius John Giles was, what he didn’t know about football wasn’t worth knowing. Bill O’Herlihy kept deferring to him. Over time, you saw what they saw. Uniquely in that world, the Aprés Match lads never seemed to know what to do with him. There was no gimmick, no hook. He was who he was – straight, knowledgeable, unshowy.
Paul McGrath told a lovely story years ago about being on RTÉ doing a game, back when they had the Premier League highlights on a Saturday night. He was nervous as hell, afraid of his life of freezing up on TV. They were doing an Everton game and McGrath was blanking and couldn’t think of anything to say about Kevin Campbell. So Giles fed him a line about Campbell looking fit since coming back from a spell in Turkey.
When they came back from an ad break, Billo asked McGrath what he made of the Everton striker and McGrath duly delivered his assessment, saying the time with Trabzonspor had served him well and he was looking a lot fitter now. When Billo turned to Giles for his take, he went, “Well I’d have to agree with what Paul said.”
That was John Giles. He finished up with Newstalk during the week, bringing an end to a media career that lasted twice as long as his actual playing career. Throughout it, you could tell what he stood for, always. You could tell what he thought was nonsense, always.
If it didn’t make sense to send your centre-half up as a spare striker in the first five minutes, it doesn’t make sense to do it in the final five either. The good players take touches that give themselves time on the ball, the less good ones take touches that cut down their time on the ball. If a midfielder has found himself ahead of the ball in the opposition half, he hasn’t understood what being a midfielder is. Core beliefs. Changeless as canal water.
John Giles has retired at the age of 84. Dunphy’s podcast has wound up, probably for good. Dear old Billo went to the presenter’s chair in the sky a whole 10 years ago. The world keeps turning and new voices take over, as they should.
But out on the green the other night, someone passed me the ball and I nearly threw my knee out trying a rabona. Some things last forever.
