'THE ITALIANS LOOKED AT JOE AND COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS DOING'

THE RULES TO live by if you were a defender in one of Bill Nicholson’s Tottenham Hotspur teams were very simple.

The doyen of White Hart Lane, the man who oversaw the glory, glory years from 1958 to 74, made it crystal clear what he expected.

“Every second ball had to go forward,” legendary goalkeeper Pat Jennings says.

“There were no square balls, at every opportunity you had to be positive and keep the ball moving. And if you were a defender, a full back especially, Bill had his laws.

“You played against your winger and you always showed him down the line. Then you had to stop the cross if it was coming. If wingers got crosses in the first question in the dressing room after was how did it happen?

“The other law was you didn’t let your man get the run on you and get across you into the box. They were Bill’s rules.”

And they worked.

Joe Kinnear, the former Republic of Ireland international who passed away last weekend after a near decade-long battle with dementia, thrived under Nicholson’s guidance and also helped set new standards for what was expected as a full back.

“I think of Joe now and he was there with us for all of those Cup wins,” Jennings continues.

There was the FA Cup success of 1967, three years after he joined Spurs as an amatuer from St Albans City, when Jennings recalls Kinnear as “the best player on the day” when they beat Chelsea.

There were two League Cup wins in ’71 and ’73 as well as European glory in the ’72 UEFA Cup.

Yet it’s the long defunct Anglo Italian Cup win over Torino in ’71 that Jennings recalls with such fondness as it emphasised just how much Kinnear was ahead of his time.

“He was the first of the real attacking full backs. He had his defensive responsibilities but he wasn’t just a defender, he had real stamina and got up and down.

“I remember out there [against Torino]. The Italians looked at Joe and couldn’t believe what he was doing.

“The wingers were looking at him and didn’t know if they should chase him back or let him go. They hadn’t seen it before. Joe would be a real hit in the game now.”

He was born in Dublin in 1946 and had two older sisters, Carmen and Shirley.

He was Joseph Reddy in those days, not Kinnear.

When their mother, Margaret, left her husband, Joe Snr, and sought a new life in England, Joe and his sisters divided their time between their grandparents before Margaret returned when her son was six to bring them to London.

They settled in Watford and soon adpoted the surname of their stepfather, Gerry Kinnear.

The 26 caps Joe Kinnear subsequently earned with the Republic of Ireland between 1967-75 started and ended with games against Turkey.

And a snippet from Hunter Davies’ seminal book The Glory Game, which spent a season inside the Spurs dressing room in ’72 illustrated how Kinnear didn’t forget his roots given he spent some of his £2,500 FA Cup final win bonus on a new TV and armchair for his grandmother in Dublin as well as a six-week holiday around Ireland.

His playing career finished with Brighton in 1976 and initial forays in management took him to India and Nepal before eventually returning to England.

It was at Wimbledon where he had his greatest success, guiding the Dons to sixth in the 1993-94 season of the Premier League, an achievement that saw him recognised by his peers in the League Managers’ Association as manager of the year.

The following campaign Kinnear got in touch with Mick McCarthy at Millwall to sign promising right back Kenny Cunningham.

The rules were a lot similar to those laid out by Nicholson.

“Joe was very clear, like a force of nature,” the former Wimbledon and Ireland captain says.

“There were no airs or graces, he was very matter of fact with how he dealt with you and what he expected of you on the pitch. He wasn’t one for keeping things in. If they needed to be said he would do so. There were plenty of blow ups, it could be volatile, but he never held a grudge.”

There was also method to some of Kinnear’s madness. Cunningham recalls one season when it was decided that he would do a man-marking job on three players in three games.

“Steve McManaman at Liverpool, Georgie Kinkladze at Man City and Juninho at Middlesbrough,” he says. “But we planned it all out, he came to me and asked was I comfortable with it, we discussed how it would work and worked on it all week. He wanted to make sure it was done right because it was something I had never done until that point.”

That eye for detail was key to those years of success at Wimbledon and it was a heart attack before a game in 1999 that forced him to take a step back from the game. He returned a few years later to help Luton Town gain promotion following relegation from the old Second Division (League One)

There was a brief stint at Nottingham Forest but his friendship with former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashely saw him take charge at St James’ Park on interim basis in 2008 before later being appointed director of football between 2013-14.

His time in England’s north east was a controversial one and is perhaps best – or worst – remembered for that infamous expletive-laden press conference.

A year after leaving Newcastle in 2014 Kinnear’s wife Bonnie announced he had been diagnosed with dementia.

Jennings sat with them both at a function to mark the final game at White Hart Lane in 2017 and the last time he saw him was at the funeral of their old Spurs teammate Martin Peters in 2019.

The news of his passing at the age of 77 last Sunday also led to a flurry of messages being sent to Cunningham.

Among them were pictures from four or five years ago at a gathering near Kinnear’s home in the south of England.

Bonnie reached out to Cunningham and some of her husband’s other Wimbledon stalwarts and they packed out a beer garden.

“Word had gone around about his diagnosis so we all travelled. Bonnie brought Joe down, it was a summer’s evening and the sun was out. Joe was in the thick of it all. He had a big smile on his face and we were all there for him.

“It was the Joe we all knew, he had a twinkle in his eye and it was good fun. I’m glad we had that moment with him.”

2024-04-14T07:12:46Z dg43tfdfdgfd