Feet on the ground

The further into retirement he gets, the more dewey-eyed we become of John Giles' playing career. But Ireland's best soccer pundit tells Daire Whelan tells that he's weary of nostalgia

"I was 29 and went to bed to sleep most afternoons when I was a footballer. At 29 though, I just wondered: what am I going to do when I don't have football in my life anymore? But like old age I think you just grow into it, so by the time I was 34 I was relaxed about it and able to accept it more."

But even at 34, John Giles had another five years of football left in him, and finally, after a forgettable and unmemorable draw against UCD in 1980, Ireland's greatest footballer retired from the game. He was nearly 40. He was Ireland's schoolboy wonderkid ("everyone knew about John Giles in Dublin growing up," says Eamon Dunphy). The young genius from Ormond Square who followed in the footsteps of his hero, Johnny Carey, to Manchester United and worked his way into Matt Busby's team of young heroes winning the FA Cup in 1963. The 18-year -old who made his Ireland debut against Sweden in 1959 scoring a breathtaking 30 yarder that the Dalymount crowds still talk about in hushed tones to this day. The midfielder who won his first League Championship with Leeds, the team that then went on to dominate English soccer, winning two Leagues, two UEFA Cups and an FA Cup. The man who went on manage his country (giving Liam Brady his international debut) and play for his country while holding down a player-manager's role at Shamrock Rovers and simultaneously attempting a soccer revolution at Milltown and in the League of Ireland.

Had it all come down to this? A dreary encounter out in Belfield in front of about 50 people? Was this how it was all supposed to end?

No regrets

"I had no regrets when I was finished," says John Giles. "Life is long enough after football and you have to live it. But I wanted to make sure that I would have no regrets, that I would use the best of what I had been given to the best of my ends. I had been given a gift – God-given or whatever you call it – and I had an obligation to use it."

There is probably no other way when you are so talented. How can we ever understand? How can we ever comprehend what it means to be able to walk out on to a sports field and be truly great? Not only the best on your street or your club, but the best in your country and one of the best in Europe. Greatness is bestowed. You just accept it and realise that your mission is to see it through to the end. There are other ways for it to end of course. There are the other talented ones, those who had it all in the palm of their hands but who blew it, threw it or lost it along the way.

But the real genius in the chosen ones is being able to recognise it humbly and modestly and to choose to work all they can at fulfilling that. Discipline, work ethic and attitude are the boring and unsexy words to describe our heroes. But these are the trademarks of true talent. For as Nike marketed so memorably with Michael Jordan (the epitome of the Chosen One) when he told us, "I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed," the glamour is in the dedication and application.

"My memories of my playing days? Hard work," recalls Giles. "The hard work that was involved in keeping yourself continually fit, the regime of the training and playing. People sometimes forget what it takes and what it means to be a professional athlete. The hardest part of it all is maintaining yourself at a continually high level. And the older you become the harder it gets."

Giles and Roy Keane

What makes it all the more remarkable is when you realise he played on until nearly 40. Roy Keane is 34 and still captaining and leading Man United by example on and off the pitch at the highest level. Keane is someone who Giles admires greatly – despite events at Saipan – and the Dubliner must recognise in the Corkman's drive, ambition and work ethic something of his younger self.

Except of course that these days Roy Keane is something of an exception. The multi-million pound salaries, the lavish lifestyles and the super star status afforded to young footballers mean the temptation to slack off is even greater ; the sinful fruits of excess are all the easier to bite off. While such players wouldn't last long at clubs like Manchester United, it wasn't too long ago that Liverpool's Spice Boys were the stars on Merseyside. Take a cursory glance at some of the stories that emanate from the Newcastle United dressing-room, where tales of players' sexual and alcohol-imbued antics were enough to send Bobby Robson into retirement. Many of today's stars are millionaires by their 21st birthdays, and wouldn't be too bothered waving goodbye to ambition by their 25th if it meant just holding on to their lifestyles a while longer. For Giles though, having to earn a wage meant playing on and he wonders how many of this generation of professionals would do likewise with all the dosh they've piled up so young and so early.

'Management wasn't for me'

Football back then didn't give you the nest egg for the rest of your life and as well as playing well into your 30's, another way to keep going was to move into management. Despite having done it for ten years at West Brom, Shamrock Rovers and Vancouver Whitecaps, he says he never liked it.

"It wasn't for me," he says. "By accident, really, I was still involved in the game through management but that was what was seen as the next step really – but I never liked it."

Giles was always his own man with strong ideas (part of the reason for his early departure from Manchester United after a row with Matt Busby) and despite early success at West Brom, he knew the manager was never truly in charge, that in the end he would always be answerable to the board and the chairman. That was why Shamrock Rovers seemed such an appealing prospect at the time. It was a chance to come home, to have true ownership of what he was doing. More importantly, it was a real opportunity to try and leave a long-standing imprint on Irish football by transforming it into something that was sustainable, self- sufficient and successful. Most significantly, it could be a real alternative to Irish lads having to leave their families and country at 16 years of age.

Through a mixture of begrudgery and lack of on-field success, the Rovers dream never took off and Giles left for Vancouver Whitecaps. He eventually headed home, and through the urging of Eamon Dunphy, was hired for RTÉ's studio analysis of the 1986 World Cup. His new life as pundit is now reaching its 20th year and the success of the Giles-Dunphy-O'Herlihy formula for RTÉ shows no signs of waning. For Giles it has meant staying in touch with the game that has given him so much.

Giles the hacker

Nowadays Giles is more than a household name. Through his newspaper columns and TV and radio punditry, everyone, including non-football people, know about John Giles. All the same, some kids have still to realise that he was actually once a very successful player in his own right and not just an analyst. Golf is his passion now, though he is quick to point out that football is his life and golf is just a hobby ("I'm just a hacker" he says). But raise the question of Tiger Woods's greatness and he will engross you as to why Woods should be so admired. In many ways the similarities between the greats in any sport are so close; the single-mindedness, the dedication and the awareness of the chance to leave a legacy in the history books. And if he had the chance all over again, he'd choose to have his skills as a golfer not a footballer: at least then you know you're in total control of your destiny.

Times gone by are a funny thing. We become more sepia-toned and dewey-eyed the longer it passes. Giles actually gets more requests for his thoughts on his time as a footballer the older he gets, as if we are starting to cherish his past more now or as another generation learns all about his achievements.

"There is a lot of nostalgia in football," he says, "and the older I get the better I seem to become – it gets longer all the time you see, to when I last had a bad game."p