Authors: Trevor Keane
Charlie’s last goal for Sunderland, a header, came against Arsenal in April 1968, while his last appearance in a red-and-white shirt came at Burnley in April 1969. One of his finest moments for the club was in the FA Cup fifth-round victory at Norwich in February 1961, when he led Second Division Sunderland to victory, scoring the only goal of the match. The
team then went on to succumb to the double-winning, Danny Blanchflower-inspired Tottenham Hotspur in the next round.
Len Ashurst recalls what it was like to play with the King: ‘I first signed for Sunderland in 1958, a year after Charlie. He was already established in the side and was vice captain. Alan Brown wanted to shore up a back line that was conceding a lot of goals. Even though he had Charlie back there, the fact was that there were players at the club who were not as enthusiastic about Sunderland as Alan and Charlie, and Alan Brown soon got rid of them. The likes of Jim McNab and I were brought into the first team at that point.
‘One of the first things you noticed about Charlie was that he was a man of principle. He never let his standards drop, and he expected the same from those around him. I can tell you, if you ever did let your standards drop, Charlie would be sure and let you know that he was not impressed. He won players over with his attitude, though. They could see he was a leader, and he really encouraged the younger players around him. He led by example. His Roman Catholic background definitely helped him to shape his principles. He was devout in his religion and used to attend church on a Sunday. Along with Alan, he definitely held the team together in the early days when some much needed change was happening at the club.
‘Despite being a big man, I never saw Charlie raise a fist or punch anyone in all my time playing alongside him. He was a commanding figure, but not physical in any way. He was a gentle giant of a man, although he could knock you out with one of his looks.
‘When Stan Anderson left the club for Newcastle in 1963, Charlie became the captain. It was a role made for him, and
he loved the honour and prestige of being captain. Charlie was close to Alan, and he had his ear. He would head up to the office on a Monday morning and talk to him about players and games, although Alan was an old-school manager, so I am not sure if he ever took any notice. That didn’t stop Charlie, though.
‘In those days you would get a couple of tickets for home games that you could give out to the family if they came up. You only got one or two, but if you ever wanted more, Charlie was your man. As captain he got a few extra, and he would keep them in his top pocket. Well, you’d ask him for how ever many you wanted, and whether it was one or two or even three – no matter how many – Charlie always managed to pull that exact number of tickets out of his top pocket.
‘One vivid memory I have of Charlie is when he got his Ford Zephyr. The car was a creamy white, and I remember he pulled up to the training ground to show it off to the players. He was very proud of that car, and the players were all suitably impressed. As he was driving away, I had this feeling that he really was the king in his own white Zephyr carriage. It suited him. He was a great man, and he was a great friend. He deserved all his success.
‘It was a good dressing-room in those days at Sunderland, and when you have a good dressing-room you end up making friends for life. The team that won promotion in 1964 was very close, and we are all still in contact with each other regularly. The club was set up for great things, but then Alan Brown fell out with the club and he left, and we didn’t quite get where we should have got to.’
Alan Brown left the club in 1968 to take over at Sheffield Wednesday, and a year later Hurley himself moved on to
pastures new, joining Bolton Wanderers on a free transfer, where he stayed until he retired in 1971. In a twelve-year period until he left the club in 1969, Hurley made over 400 appearances for Sunderland, although he managed to miss his debut for Bolton in a pre-season match against Bury, as he was moving into his new home at the time. Bolton were a Second Division side at that time, and in Hurley’s final season as a professional footballer they finished twenty-second in the division and were relegated to Division Three. In all he played over forty games for Bolton. He retired from playing top-level football at the age of thirty-five.
IRELAND TIME
Charlie Hurley was first selected to play for Ireland in 1955. However, a knee injury prevented him from making his debut and it would be a full fifteen months before he got back to full fitness. He eventually made his debut for Ireland in May 1957 in a match that will forever be remembered, one that ensured Hurley would always be a hero for the national side. At the tender age of twenty, the then Millwall defender found himself thrust into the side that was playing in a World Cup qualifier against England, Ireland having lost 5–1 in London less than two weeks before.
In a historic match against an England team that contained Stanley Matthews, Billy Wright, Duncan Edwards and Tommy Taylor, Ireland took the lead in the third minute through Alf Ringstead. Some of the biggest names of the day had to wait until the ninetieth minute to salvage a draw, when Bristol City
legend John Atyeo scored for the visitors. In all Charlie made forty appearances for Ireland, scoring two goals, with both coming in the same game, a 4–1 victory over Norway in Oslo in May 1964. Charlie played as a striker that day. His final match in a green shirt was a 2–1 defeat to Hungary in June 1969.
MANAGEMENT
Despite his stature in the game, Hurley’s time in management was relatively uneventful and short-lived. A five-year spell with Reading was his only foray into club management in English football. At the time that he took over at Reading they were in the bottom tier of English football, the Fourth Division, and it was not until 1976 that Hurley guided the club to Division Three. Unfortunately, he could not keep them there and after one season they were relegated again, so Hurley left the club.
Steve Hetzke was a defender at Reading and later Sunderland, and he remembers Hurley from his time in the lower divisions with Reading: ‘The club needed a change of direction, and for Charlie it was his first job in management since his retirement as a player. He initially started off in a player-manager role. I think he wanted to be one of the lads, but he learned very quickly and soon realised he couldn’t do it.
‘The surprising thing about his appointment was that he brought no one in with him. He had no one experienced that he could bounce ideas off or be his yes man. He needed a mentor, someone experienced in football to help his development as a manager, and I think long term that may have been his downfall. He found it hard at the start, but as time went on he got more
and more into it. When he first took the role he adopted an open office, where everyone was welcome to talk to him, but as time went on he learned quickly and took the stance that if you wanted to talk to him, you better have a good reason. It was all part of his development as a manager.
‘I remember his first pre-season in charge. All we did was running for the first few weeks. It was the turncoat syndrome: as a player you hate running, and then as a manager it’s one of the first things you enforce. It was quite funny, though, as we asked him why all the running, and he said it was to get us fit. When we then asked him, “Do you like it?” he replied, “No, that’s why I’m at the back.”’
The change from being a player to a manager can be very hard. You go from being one of the lads to being the man in charge. You have to change your approach to the players. Hetzke recalls Robin Friday, who was a real character in the Reading team in those days and would have been a handful for even the most experienced of managers, not to mention a rookie: ‘Robin was a rock star in the lower divisions in those days, and he is regarded as a legend of the game by Reading and Cardiff fans. He was a colourful character, well known in and around Reading. To be honest, I am not sure how Charlie handled him at all. I remember one time we were heading to an away game, and we were all on the bus waiting, but there was no sign of Robin. So we contacted his house, and his wife said he was on his way. Well, we went to pick him up when suddenly around the corner came Robin, dressed in a blue velvet suit, with cherry-red shoes, a T-shirt and a multicoloured scarf that was hanging down to his feet. It was clear that he had never made it home. Charlie looked at him almost in disbelief. I mean, if you could
have taken a picture, you would have captured Charlie with his mouth wide open. To make matters worse, Robin, as calm as you like, just said, “Morning, gaffer” and went to the back of the bus to go to sleep. There was no apology, nothing. Charlie didn’t say a word, but it was all over his face, which was red with anger. The fact that Charlie did not react to the situation as a more experienced manager would have done, shows that he probably wasn’t used to seeing this type of behaviour as a player at his level and was unsure how to respond.
‘I think as a coach Charlie would not have been considered a tactician, but his biggest attribute as a manager was that he treated us, and looked upon us, as men. It’s a small thing, but I was a young player in those days, and a lot of managers treated players like children. But Charlie, he would lay it out for us, saying, “This is your job. Go out and do it.” He was passionate and this alone could motivate you. Going out onto the pitch, you had a job to do and you did it.
‘He was not afraid to tell you, though, if you did that job wrong. There was one game where the opposition winger pushed the ball past me, and I thought it was going for a corner, so I didn’t fully chase it back. Even though the ball went out – the linesman missed it – their winger got a cross in and they scored. Naturally, Charlie gave out to me at half-time, asking me, “Why didn’t you chase back after the ball?” I replied that I thought it had gone out. His only response to that was, “Well, then, where did it go?” The answer was it had ended up in the net and had cost us a goal. Charlie was so angry with me that he actually dropped me for the next game, which was against Torquay. As it turned out their centre-forward gave my replacement a torrid time and scored two, and at half-time he took off the other
player and brought me back on. To me it showed his humility. He was angry with me from the previous game and wanted me to know it, but at the same time he wanted to do what was best for the team.
‘As a centre-half like Charlie himself, he was great to learn from. You couldn’t fail to learn from him. In those days we’d watch black-and-white videos of players, and everyone had seen King Charlie playing at Sunderland. Later on in my career I actually played at Sunderland, and when I got up there I saw exactly what he meant to the club and the respect in which he was held. It was amazing, really. We probably didn’t fully understand down in Reading, but up there you really got a feel for it.
‘Once, five of us were called into the office for a chat, and Charlie was talking to the strikers about how they needed to get stuck in more and to stop being so airy-fairy, to use his own language. As Charlie was talking, there was a wasp flying around the room. Even though we were listening, the wasp was a bit distracting, and it eventually landed on the phone. Suddenly, Charlie swatted the wasp, and he turned and said to the strikers, “That’s exactly what I mean. I want you to have killer instincts.” It summed the situation up nicely for all of us involved and it just seemed to perfectly emphasise the point he was trying to get across.
‘Charlie was a hard and fair man. As I said before, he would have benefited from having an established right-hand man with him, but he was also lucky that the Reading changing-room was full of strong characters in those days. When he resigned the players didn’t want him to go. We all went down to his office to discuss it with him. It showed the respect we had for him. It’s something you rarely hear of now in football.’
Before his time with Reading, Hurley had a taste of
management with Ireland, but he was still a player himself and had limited impact on the squad that was picked. His main role was to motivate and organise the team. He would often turn up to a game to find that different players, players he had not seen play or had not even met before, had been called into the team at the last minute. Players were brought in and put anywhere. There was little of the organisation that was to come in future years, as Eoin Hand recalls: ‘I remember I made my debut under Hurley. I came on as a sub for Mick Leech, who was a centre-forward, and Charlie Hurley said to me, “Go on there now.” I said to him, “I have never played there in my life,” but he just replied, “Ay, sure, go on there.” His team talks focused on the pride of pulling on the jersey, and there was little preparation or knowledge about our opponents. The structure was not in place to support the men who were the figureheads of the team.’
Mick Leech, a Shamrock Rovers legend, had a similar experience: ‘Charlie Hurley was the man who gave me my debut. That said, I didn’t actually meet him for the first time until twelve noon on the day of the match, although as a fan and supporter of the national team before I played for Ireland, I was very familiar with Charlie Hurley. That game was against Czechoslovakia, and we lost 2–1 in Dalymount. As it turned out, a future Ireland manager in Eoin Hand came on to replace me during that game. He was a centre-half and I was a centre forward, so it was a strange move.
‘The Ireland set-up in those days was very different to how it is today. It was almost farcical, really. The players based in England would come over on the mail boat from Holyhead, having caught a train to Liverpool beforehand, depending on where they were based. They would get in at about six or seven in the morning, take
a taxi to their home and go to bed for a few hours, before getting up at midday to meet up with the team in the Gresham Hotel before the game. The League of Ireland players would meet up at the same time and place, but obviously without the travel. The team in those days was selected by an FAI committee and was decided on a Wednesday or Thursday. The hope was that nobody got injured over the weekend, but a standby list of League of Ireland players was available as back up.