John Giles made an appearance on Newstalk FM's Off The Ball show Thursday evening, the day after Eamon Dunphy announced his departure from RTE.
Speaking about their beginnings as football analysts, Giles revealed that the only reason that he ever considered joining RTE was because of Dunphy, telling Nathan Murphy that Dunphy was 'very much involved' in his decision to join the national broadcaster.
The former Leeds player also divulged that it was touch and go as to whether he would be given the job at RTE with the organisation worried that he would not say anything:
I wouldn't have been on the panel if it hadn't been for Eamon. Eamon wanted me on and RTE were not too keen on having me.
I was known as being very, very cautious and didn't say much and started when I was manager of the Ireland team. I was very very careful to protect - what I considered the most important thing - my players.
When Eamon recommended me to go on the panel, the opinion of RTE was 'well there's no point in having John on he's not going to say anything'. But of course I'd finished management at that time, I was free to say whatever I wanted.
But it went to the night before the World Cup in 1986. It came back to me that they weren't keen on having me. And I went oh tell them to stick it, I'm not bothered about it. I wasn't seeking any career in the business.
But at the last minute they said okay and Eamon said come on over, which I did.
Giles also reminisced about Ireland during the Charlton years, and told an anecdote which explained the clash of opinion between Charlton and the RTE panel during the manager's tenure over the national team:
The philosophy under Jack was not necessarily a constructive or expansive way of playing football. I played with Jack for 10 years at Leeds and we were total opposites in our playing careers of how the game should be played.
Jack was a big centre half and he saw the game through the eyes of a big centre half in my opinion.
We'd total different philosophies on the game. Jack was very very cautious and he didn't trust anybody because he was a big centre half himself and if he got the ball on the edge of the box there was a good chance he would lose it and that's the way he saw it. If I was coming back or Bremner, we wouldn't lose the ball, we were skilful enough to get out of it.
In fact I said to him one time, Jack, about his brother Bobby, I said, 'your Bobby wouldn't get into your team'. He said 'he would if he did what I told him to do.
