Chic Charnley

Name: James Callaghan Charnley

DOB: 11/06/63

POB: Glasgow

Position: Midfielder

Clubs: St Mirren, Ayr United, Clydebank, Hamilton Academicals, Partick Thistle, Djurgardens, Cork City, Dumbarton, Dundee, Hibs, Portadown.

Chic Charnley is the classic example of the
underachieving Scottish footballer weighed down by lifestyle and culture off
the pitch. He played for 15 clubs in his career (moving 20 times), the biggest
of which was Hibs and even then it was the season they were relegated. But talk
to anybody who saw Charnley in his prime and they’ll tell you what a tremendous
footballer he was.

Charnley stood at 6ft and played the centre
midfield position like a freight train when on top of his game. He wasn’t
particularly fast on the ground but he moved the football with a quickness that
would unsettle the opposition. Then there was the range of passing and his
famed left-foot. He could drop a 70 yard pass onto a 10p and had the vision to
execute such a move during a high speed game.

He didn’t come through the youth ranks at any
club because the immensely talented youngster didn’t play school football. In Scotland the
school and club games, for some bizarre reason that never makes sense and never
will, are played on a Saturday. That means the most talented of young
footballers don’t get the chance to watch their team every week. Charnley wasn’t
having any of that. He was a devoted Celtic fan and chose Parkhead over
playing. It sounds like a ridiculous thing to do in hindsight, but for a young
lad the fanciful notion of playing professionally would have seemed like the
ridiculous choice to make over doing what he loved most in life, supporting his
team. Upon leaving school he started playing for the local boys club, Possil
Villa, before graduating to the juniors with Rutherglen Glencairn.

The most famous goal Charnley scored was
probably the 25-yard screamer that defeated Celtic on Henrik Larsson’s debut –
with the incumbent King of Celtic Park giving the ball away to Charnley in the
build up to the goal. However, a little known fact is that Charnley almost
signed for Hearts as a 19-year old. He was invited to a week long trial at Tynecastle,
only to be informed by the club at the conclusion of the trip that they did not
require his services. The player guessed it was the enthusiasm in which he sank
six pints in what was supposed to be a friendly post-training drink with
assistant manager Sandy Jardine which cost him the chance to sign for the club.

St Mirren were not deterred by the swift pint
intake and signed the midfielder in 1982. However, soon after joining there was
a change in management with Alex Miller coming into the club. Needless to say
the disciplinary favouring manager did not get on well with his young
midfielder. After handing the player his debut, Miller decided it’d be good to
keep the young player’s feet on the ground by making him clean the boots of the
first team squad. Charnely informed Miller where he could stick such an order before
launching a particularly muddy boot at Miller. Needless to say, he was not kept
on.

It was another aspect of Charnley’s personality
that held him back in the professional game. He couldn’t keep his aggression in
check. The player always defended himself, saying he wasn’t a dirty player.
What caused him to be sent off 17 times in his career was retaliating at
opponents he perceived to have slighted him or telling the referee exactly what
he felt about a particular decision. This was the essence of Charnley. To some
he seemed a complex character that was difficult to handle and this was the reason he
moved clubs so many times. But to those that knew him well and signed him
regularly – John Lambie and Jim Duffy – he was as straight-forward as they come.
Perhaps too straight-forward for the hierarchy of respect
demanded in professional football. Charnley called a spade a spade regardless
of the trouble it got him into. When asked why he was playing poorly in training,
he would respond by admitting he’d sunk 10 pints the night before, rather than
lying and claiming illness or injury.

After playing for Ayr for a season he quit the professional
game for three years before resurfacing at Clydebank.
After another collision involving his temper and the management he moved onto Hamilton, signed by John
Lambie for the first time and then followed the boss when he went to Partick
Thistle a year later. This was the most consistent stay in his career, even if
it was in the second tier. He played 75 league games over three years at
Firhill while notching 22 league goals, a terrific return for a midfielder. It
was during this time that the subject of his most famous anecdote occurred.

During a training session at Maryhill the
Thistle players were soon being verbally abused by two teenagers standing
pitch-side. The squad ignored the abuse for a while but eventually got fed up
with the vitriol coming from their two-man audience and Charnley asked the boys
to come back when training was finished for a “discussion”. Well the two lads
did return; armed with a samurai sword, a knife and a growling dog. Now, there
is absolutely little doubt (even at humble clubs like Thistle) nowadays that
all the players would have taken off in the other direction or at the very
least tried to pacify the aggressors. This was a different age and they’d
picked on the wrong team. Charnley, flanked by Gerry Collins and Gordon Rae,
ran at the pair. In seconds the dog ran off, the one with the knife was mauled
by the Collins and Rae and the samurai wielder got a kicking from Charnley.

In 1991, the club sold him to St Mirren,
deciding to cash in on their prize asset. It wasn’t a particularly good year
for the player with fans unable to make their minds up regarding their
enigmatic new signing. On his day he was worth the price of admission alone; on
others he looked out of his depth. Once again his temper caused him to be
ousted from the club for spitting on an opponent in a match against Ayr.

After a spell in Sweden with Djurgardens he moved
back to Thistle in 1993 with the team in the Premier League. He adopted a more
defensive role in the midfield in his second spell, utilising his passing and
vision from a deeper position with age beginning to creep up on him. It was during this time that he
was offered and accepted to play in Mark Hughes’s testimonial for his boyhood
heroes against Manchester United. At Old Trafford, Charnley ran the show in a
3-1 win and was offered the chance to join Celtic on a pre-season tour, an
offer he turned down because of a pre-booked end of season holiday with the
Thistle players. When he returned the chance to sign for Celtic was gone.

Twice Thistle successfully stayed in the
division Premier League but it wasn’t enough to secure him a contract for the
1995/96 season and he dropped down the leagues to play for Dumbarton. His
career seemed to be over until he got a call from his old teammate Jim Duffy
and the chance to play for Dundee. He excelled
in his one half season at Dens
Park and followed Duffy
when the boss moved to Easter Road.

The 1997/98 season proved to be an Indian summer.
At 34 his form was so outstanding in the first couple months of the season that
journalists, namely Chick Young, were calling for him to be included in the Scotland squad.
Sadly for the player the call never arrived and he would never win a cap across
his playing career. The Hibs side mirrored the form of their star midfielder
that year; falling away after the tremendous start, hitting bottom shortly
into New Year and eventually being relegated, with Charnley released by new boss
Alex McLeish. He then drifted about from league to non-league to Northern Ireland
before retiring to become a full-time coach back with Thistle in 2003.

Where is he now? Chic left Thistle in 2004 but is
now back coaching after being invited to join Jim Duffy at Clyde
in the assistant manager’s position.

Show: Debt
Inception