Jack Charlton's grandaughter uses football to help Syrians

Former Leeds defender Jack - a World Cup winner with England - is a hero in Ireland after managing them to a golden era of international success, including the World Cup quarter-final in 1990.

The charismatic Geordie sadly died from lymphoma on July 10 last year, aged 85, after also living with dementia in later life.

Kate Wilkinson with her grandfather Jack Charlton

Speaking on the anniversary of her beloved grandad’s death, Glasgow-based Kate Wilkinson revealed how she’s carrying on Jack’s legacy by using football to help heal the wounds of conflict.

Kate – a programme manager at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s joint HQ in East Kilbride – heads a team supporting the UK Government’s biggest ever humanitarian response.

Between April 2020 and March 2021, the UK provided over 240,000 Syrian pupils with access to quality literacy and numeracy schooling, including through the Syria Education Programme, which also includes football and other sporting activities.

Some schools also offer a football tournament as part of an end of semester ceremony and sport is also used during summer camps, to support children to recover from the psychological strain of the conflict.

Kate, 27, said: “My grandad would have been proud of the part football is playing on giving kids hope of a better future.

“The role that sport can play in building unity amongst people and building respect, is personified by what happened with my grandad managing and getting Ireland to Italia 90.

“He somehow managed to overcome huge tensions over an Englishman taking the Ireland job on. Football can be a powerful force in breaking down barriers and overcoming the most deeply entrenched problems.

“Hearing about these stories from Grandad struck a chord in me. He inspired me to want to work in an industry that could help people and be a unifying force for good in the world. So, given I couldn’t kick a ball to save my life, I chose international aid.

“The support the UK is providing, in education and psychosocial support, will have a huge impact on these children’s lives and we can all be proud of that.”

Kate helped arrange for Foreign Office Minister Wendy Morton to visit the crucial Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Turkey and war-torn Syria on last week.

The UK has committed over £3.7billion to supporting the 12.2 million Syrians forced to flee their homes since civil war erupted 10 years ago.

More than 500,000 Syrians have been killed in the brutal conflict sparked by dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The UK is urging fellow UN Security Council members to keep the border crossing open for vital humanitarian aid deliveries, amid fears Russia could veto the move at a vote on July 10.

Kate added: “You cannot imagine what people in Syria have lived through. It really is a heart-breaking situation.

“I regularly read stories of hospitals and schools being bombed and people being needlessly killed. There are children living in tiny tents with little gas fires to heat food on being killed because their tent caught fire.

“Child marriage is a big problem in crises like Syria. Parents’ options are so limited, they feel it’s safer for their daughters to be married. One less mouth to feed could be the difference of life or death for another of their children.

“It sounds really awful but then you realise just how desperate these parents are. Through education we aim to provide a much more secure long-term future for children so that parents do not feel forced to make these decisions.

“It’s terrifying to think that any Syrian child under the age of ten knows nothing but war.

“Millions of people are living in crowded refugee camps with no infrastructure, no water networks, no sewage networks, so we must do everything we can to help them to rebuild their lives.”

Kate admits she’d never really truly appreciated her grandad’s impact until she watched the BBC documentary Finding Jack Charlton earlier this year.

She said: “I don’t think I saw him at all as a famous person – he was just grandad. I was born in 1994, but I was too young to realise. I’d heard stories about his footballing days, but when the documentary came out, I was amazed to see his accomplishments.

“Since he died, one thing that is quite interesting, is that everybody’s reflections on him as a person are exactly the same as my reflections on him.

“He was always very playful, and he definitely didn’t take himself too seriously. A lot of the pictures that I have are funny - whether he was blowing out my candles on my eighth birthday, or whatever.

“He always maintained his roots as the family of a miner and was very much a north-east working class guy. That was one bit of his personality that never changed, ever.”

Kate was with Jack on the day he passed away.

She said: “The family had gathered to be with him because we knew it was imminent and I saw him just a couple of hours he passed away.

“I take comfort in that he always remembered me. He’d ask me again and again right until the end if I was still living in Scotland. He’d always loved Scotland so it must have struck a chord. They used to holiday there a lot. He had friends in Dumfries and used to fish off Arran. He liked Glaswegian football fans and his testimonial for Leeds was against Celtic.”

She added: “Dementia is an incredibly hard thing for a family to go through, although he never fully lost who he was. You could ask him what he’d done that morning and his mind would go blank, but he could suddenly remember totally random memories from years ago.

“He might be watching Sky Sports and say ‘Oh, there’s Paul McGrath’. It was through his after-dinner speaking that we started to notice there was a problem.

“Early on, he’d kind of forget things on stage, but grandma would be there to kind of prompt him and then he would just laugh it off and then pick it up again fine.

“Then it started to get gradually worse, so a decision was made for him to stop doing public engagement stuff.

“We didn’t talk about it publicly when he was alive because he still read the paper every day and he wouldn’t want to read this about himself.”

Thousands of well-wishers lined the streets of Jack’s hometown in Ashington, Northumberland to pay their respects on the day of his funeral last summer.

Kate will be joining the rest of her family to support Jack’s wife Pat on the first anniversary of his death.

She said: “We’re playing it low key and just want to make sure grandma is alright. They were together for 60 plus years.

“One thing about grandad was that he found real comfort in my grandma. He’d wait for her to come home and always look round the room to make sure she was nearby. He obviously felt so connected to her and that was heart-warming, but also heart-breaking to watch.

“I think this past year or so has been harder for her more than most. Like many people, she’s been self-isolating, and we’ve seen her infrequently. That’s been hard.

“There were restrictions around the funeral. I think it was limited to 20 or something so it was a small service. We had to live Zoom it for close family and friends who could not make it like my brother who was in Australia just couldn’t get back.

“Someone suggested we do a procession through Ashington on the day of his funeral and thousands of people came out. It was unbelievable. Grandad would have loved that, so I think although the funeral was small, the procession made it feel like a special day.”

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