Picture Positano, by the sea. It is southern Italy in the summertime, June of 1990, to be more precise. A Geordie gazes out at the azure Mediterranean, watching a fisherman cast his line. His thoughts are no doubt preoccupied with future entanglements - in a few days, the football team he manages will play Romania for a chance to reach the quarterfinals of the World Cup - but for now Jack Charlton is content to watch this fisherman at work.
It was at this moment that football journalist Tony Francis, a witness to this idyllic scene, spoke up.
“Bet you wish you were out there, Jack,” Francis said.
“No,” Charlton responded. “Not my kind of water.”
“What’s your kind of water then?” Francis enquired.
“Alaska,” Charlton said.
While what would happen a few days later in Cagliari and then later in Rome would shape modern Irish history, for Charlton and Francis, a magical idea was borne that afternoon along the Amalfi coast: a fishing trip of a lifetime. Once this mad football business calmed down, the two men would embark on a trip of the world’s great salmon rivers, and create a television programme about it. It was called ‘Salmon Run With Jack Charlton’ and it was originally commissioned for Yorkshire TV before its rights were bought by the BBC in 1991.
And so the two men found themselves side-by-side again 12 months later, beside another a divine body of water, this time 8,000km away, as the majestic salmon of the Pacific began their fateful run up Alaskan rivers to their final spawning ground. Charlton had found his waters.
While Charlton’s upbringing near the pits in Ashington must have felt light years away from the Kodiak riverlands, the former Ireland manager cultivated a love of fishing and shooting with an equal relish to his passion for football.
In ‘Salmon Run’, Charlton takes viewers on a six-part journey of the great salmon rivers of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Norway, and most epically, Alaska. Half of the series has been uploaded to youtube and despite being nearly twenty years old, it stands the test of time. It is a calming travelogue and an investigation into the politics of salmon fishing, a historical journey and a ballad to man’s age-old pursuit of that incredible fish.
Football no longer employs men with opinions on otters, like this:
Jack Charlton narrates as an otter eats a fish in Fermoy in 1991.
"An otter...eating a fish...under a bridge." pic.twitter.com/FnilzOjJTE— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) July 14, 2020
On 'Salmon Run', Charlton is presenter, tour guide and star, while Francis was director and producer. Along the way, Charlton encounters a wide range of characters along the river banks - from the Queen Mother’s ghilee at Balmoral to a shopkeeper in Lismore. He is equally at home with them all.
'Salmon Run With Jack Charlton' is an incredible 6-part BBC series with Jack doing the think he loved most: fishing.
Whatever about his football tactics, Jack had a poet's soul. Here he is outside Balmoral. pic.twitter.com/6di9b03CgW— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) July 14, 2020
He narrates the scenes with Attenboroughian gravitas. And, of course, he fishes. Sometimes he catches something, sometimes he doesn’t. His boundless love for the sport is instantly infectious.
“This was Jack in his element. He knew the subject better than we did. He was so enthusiastic, like a kid. It was a joy to produce and direct,” Francis said on Monday.
Unlike so much of the celeb filler that deadens TV these days, ‘Salmon Run’ is deeply immersed in its subject. Their expedition in Ireland took them up the Blackwater, the Corrib and the Moy. Charlton was arguably the most famous person in Ireland at the time - Francis can still recall the hordes of people who gathered near the salmon weir in Galway to watch Charlton cast - but Jack insisted in staying in bed and breakfasts.
One morning, in a bed and breakfast in the ‘middle of nowhere’ in Galway, over breakfast, Charlton, Francis and the BBC production team were treated to an Irish step dancing session from the three daughters of the housekeeper.
“Jack said to us ‘You don’t get that in a Holiday Inn,” Francis recalls.
Fishing can be tedious business, as can television production, but it seems there was no better man to travel the world with. Francis recalls a meal in England with Charlton during filming, when a bolshie guest smashed a wine bottle against their table and threatened the group with violence.
"Jack stood up and, calm as you like, said ‘C’mon behave yourself. There’s no need for that.’"
There are many lighter moments in the programme, including Charlton flirting with a Norwegian woman by the fireside after a fruitless day of fishing, but there’s plenty of philosophy in the programme as well. During one salmon expedition, Charlton explains why fishing excites him more than football.
Jack Charlton on the difference between football and fishing.
Football gave him none of the joy that fishing did.
(From 'Salmon Run') pic.twitter.com/FKkfTOxgTN— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) July 14, 2020
“People say to me ‘do you get excited at football matches? And I say no. Because when I watch a football match, I know what’s going wrong and know what’s going right. And I’m involved in the game. But it doesn’t excite me. I sometimes get a little bit angry. I watched a friend of mine Jock Stein die at a football match and I keep saying to people, ‘I will not die at a football match but I might on the river from a heart attack when I have a big drag on and they might find me down the river, but I’ll still be holding my rod’.”
The river never took Jack Charlton, but it’s easy to imagine his soul there now, along the Tay or the Tweed or the Moy, reclining in the willows.
