For many people on the island of Ireland the legacy of Billy Bingham will be viewed through the prism of the 1993 World Cup qualifying game in Belfast. Jack Charlton’s Ireland team had come to Windsor Park looking for a result which would qualify them for USA 94, while Bingham’s Northern Ireland were determined to stop them.
Bingham’s comments about “mercenaries” on the opposition team raised the temperature in the build-up to the game at an already fevered time and when Charlton’s side achieved the draw which got them through, there was an unseemly exchange between the two men on the touchline, with Charlton wagging his finger and Bingham’s face screwed up in indignation.
Northern Ireland were a spent force at the time, the Republic were still on a roll and the chant heard in Dublin earlier in the campaign that there was “one team in Ireland” hurt Bingham, who died on Thursday aged 90, more than he would have liked to admit.
Charlton and Bingham made up afterwards, away from the cameras, like they did the previous time. As a tricky right winger with Luton Town in the late 1950s, Bingham recalled once “nutmegging Jackie at Elland Road . . . He came straight across after that passage of play broke down and said, ‘You try that stunt again, little man, and I’ll knock your effing teeth down your throat.’ Afterwards, however, Jackie shook my hand and said, ‘Well played, kid.’ ”
Bingham was actually nearly four years older than Charlton, but the image of him as something of a cheeky chappy never quite went away. Behind that exterior was a sharp analytical footballing brain and peerless talents as a motivator.
In 2003 he took first place in The Sunday Times’s top ten of Irish managers, in a list which also included Charlton and Martin O’Neill; nothing that has happened since on either side of the border will have knocked him off that perch. Just like Charlton, he qualified his international side for successive World Cups — in Bingham’s case, 1982 and 1986.
He was only prevented from guiding Northern Ireland to the 1984 European Championship by being beaten on goal difference for the sole qualifying place in group 6 by West Germany, a team which Bingham’s side defeated home and away. Throw in a couple of victories in the British Championships, including the final one in 1984, and it represented a body of work at international level which no Northern Ireland manager will probably surpass.
Later, success for Michael O’Neill meant that Stoke City came calling, with financial incentives which the IFA could not come close to matching. In Bingham’s day, O’Neill might have just managed to do both jobs — he actually tried it for a while, but it was clearly unsustainable, given the pressures of modern management. While Northern Ireland manager Bingham was able to also spend time coaching in Saudi Arabia and managed Plymouth Argyle, but he could smoke his pipe with the most satisfaction at his home in Southport when it came to recalling his achievements in the international arena.
A proud Unionist, one of his masterstrokes was making a Catholic, Martin O’Neill, captain of the 1982 side that beat the hosts Spain on the way to top the first group stage at the 1982 World Cup. O’Neill got the role ahead of Sammy McIlroy to lead a formidable starting XI, nearly half of whom came from a nationalist/Catholic background. While O’Neill would have had Brian Clough as his mentor-in-chief, he would also have learnt much from Bingham regarding moulding a team and sending the right messages.
While everybody of a certain age remembers Northern Ireland’s performances at the World Cup, it is often overlooked that they secured six clean sheets in a row on the way to Mexico 86, including two games against Turkey, away to Romania and the scoreless draw at Wembley against Bobby Robson’s England, sandwiched by shut-outs in prestigious friendlies against Spain and France. Bingham knew that with a great goalkeeper — Pat Jennings — a strong back four and a resolute midfield he could always rely on his front two to nick a goal that would win the game, and so often he was proved right.
No doubt there will be a nostalgic atmosphere at Windsor Park to mark his passing before Northern Ireland’s Uefa Nations League game against Cyprus. Elsewhere, there will be plenty of respect. He will go down as one of Northern Ireland’s great sporting figures, in the company of George Best, Alex Higgins, Joey Dunlop, Rory McIlroy, Mary Peters and others. The smile on his face will be the broadest of all.
