Jack and Frank in Boston.

Frank by name, frank by nature

Frank Gillespie has plenty of years left in him yet, but after chatting to him recently this writer couldn’t help but pity the person who tries to write his obituary!

From being the youngest in a family of 12 who began life in Tyrrellspass, before moving to Coventry in the 1960s and then coming back again, owning and making a success out of some of the best known bars in Boston and Dublin, befriending some of the biggest names in sport and entertainment, including Larry Mullen of U2 and Michael Flatley, not mention having the late, great Brendan Grace as a much loved father-in-law, Frank has certainly lived an eventful life and has the stories to prove it.

The Westmeath Examiner caught up with the affable Boston based businessman when he was back visiting his home county and many relatives and friends for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world on its head in the spring of 2020.

We spent most of the time talking about those extraordinary few years in the 1990s when he became an unofficial member of the Irish football team’s inner circle at a time when Jack Charlton and his squad were punching well above their weight on the world stage and recording famous victories over some of the sport’s biggest names, something that sadly won’t be replicated any time soon.

How does a fella from Tyrrellspass manage to find himself travelling on the bus with the Irish football team on some of their biggest nights, going on scouting trips with Jack Charlton and being invited into the dugout for matches?

It all started in the summer of 1991 when the Irish team played in Boston, where Frank owned the Blackthorn Bar, a popular venue with the city’s large ex-pat community. Sensing an opportunity and with an innate gift for PR, sports fan Frank chanced his arm and went to Logan Airport on the day that the Irish team arrived in Boston and handed out business cards with his number and the Blackthorn’s address on it to Jack and the players.

A few days into their stay, one of the team’s senior members, the legendary GAA star turned international footballer Kevin Moran, went to the Blackthorn for a few drinks.

“He said ‘I can’t believe you came down [to the airport]. Fair play to you. We spoke about you and admired you coming to the airport and meeting us and inviting us for a drink.

“That was the start of a serious beginning,” Frank told the Westmeath Examiner.

The following summer the team returned to Boston for the Four Nations US Cup and spent a few nights enjoying themselves in the Blackthorn. On their first night in the bar, the players were having such a good time that they decided to engage in a bit of role reversal with the hard working staff. Frank says that is a night that lives long in the memory of everyone there.

“The drinkers were cheering, asking for autographs, taking photographs and treating the lads as the heroes they were. Then the players decided to throw the bar staff out from behind the counter and began to serve the customers.

“For the next two hours Ray Houghton, John Aldridge, Kevin Moran, Tony Cascarino and the rest of them pulled pints and shorts. The punters were throwing money across the bar in a bid to get their attention. I think the bartenders did well from tips that night – I’m not sure how well I did. But the craic was good.”

On their last day in Boston, a group of 13 players decided to go on an early golfing excursion before their 5.30pm flight. They arrived at the Blackthorn around 10.30am as Frank had arranged cars to take them to the golf course for their 11.15am tee off.

While they initially declined his offer a drink while they waited, it was a hot June day and they decided they’d have ‘one’ before they headed to the course.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before the golf was forgotten and there was talk about missing the plane and staying in Boston for another. As the flight time approached, Jack Charlton’s assistant, Maurice Setters, rang the bar and using industrial language told Frank to get the lads to the airport.

“He said the bus was leaving for the airport and they were going to leave without them. I said to him that at that stage, I didn’t think they cared.”

An exasperated Setters hung up the phone and a few minutes later Jack rang the bar. He told Frank that if he could get the players back to the hotel, he’d appreciate it, and that “it must be some f*****g pub”.

The players eventually agreed to go back to the hotel and just made it to the airport on time. “They were poured on the plane that night,” Franks says.

It was on the bus from the hotel to the airport that a young Roy Keane and team captain Mick McCarthy first locked horns. It was the first chapter in a stormy relationship that came to a head on the Pacific island of Saipan on the eve of the 2002 World Cup.

However, 10 years earlier, while the players may have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, at least in some people’s eyes, for Frank and Blackthorn those few days helped no end.

“That created a lot of good publicity for the pub. There is no such thing as bad publicity,” he said.

Those few days cemented Frank’s bond with the players, a bond that still exists today, to the extent that he attended the Boys in Green reunion in the K-Club in 2018.

His relationship with Jack Charlton got off to a rocky start, but the legendary manager and World Cup winner soon welcomed Frank into the team’s inner circle, and when Franks went to watch his buddies in the Ireland team play, he was entrusted with making sure he kept them out of mischief when they were on nights out while on international duty. It was the start of a friendship with Jack that lasted until his death in 2020.

“The lads knew that the words coming from me [on night’s out] were coming from Jack,” he said.

Frank was a fixer, of sorts, for Jack and his team, many of whom he still counts as good friends that he is in touch with regularly.

“I was called many things, including Jack’s unofficial PA. I was called a facilitator, that’s probably the right word for it. I enjoyed what I did and I got spoiled.”

Frank had a front row seat, sometimes literally, for some of their biggest matches, including the glorious day in Giants Stadium in June 1994 when Ireland got their World Cup campaign off to a dream start by beating a highly rated Italian side 1-0, courtesy of long-range shot from Ray Houghton.

He regularly came home to Ireland from Boston for Irish games during that halcyon period. On the day before one of the matches, he was asked by Jack to keep a match ticket for Sr Pius. When he asked where Sister Pius was from he was told “down around Limerick”.

Frank got a pleasant shock the next day, when Sr Pius turned out to be none other than the Sr Pius who taught him Irish when attended St Joseph’s Secondary School in Rochfortbridge.

Frank had come a long way in those intervening years and both the former pupil and his former teacher enjoyed catching up just hours before one of the biggest sporting occasions in the history of Ireland.

“She was very much into sport. She was a great nun. I loved her. It was amazing story [Jack and Sr Pius’s friendship]. He included her in everything.”

Jack and Frank also become business partners for a period when they were part of a consortium that in 1994 bought the famous Dublin bar, the Baggot Inn.

Despite being based in Boston with his wife, Brendan Grace’s daughter Melanie and their two children Patrick and James, as well as his son and daughter from his first marriage, Frank made a point of seeing Jack once a year.

Speaking about the death of his great friend in July 2020, an emotional Frank said he deeply regrets not being able to travel to pay his respects and say goodbye in person, due to the public health restrictions in place at the time.

“That hurt a lot. I did get to see it on the computer. It was very sad,” he said.

When asked what was the secret of Jack’s success as Ireland manager, aside from the quality of the players at his disposal, Frank said that when it came to management, the nation’s favourite Englishman kept things simple.

“He loved his boys, his team – and they loved him. If he said to the lads ‘jump’, they’d say ‘how high?’. They loved coming to Ireland and he gave them so much leeway.

“Lads would want to come in to Dublin on a Thursday for a match, when they wouldn’t be due in until Saturday or Sunday. They loved the fun. Even the training sessions, I’m walking with Jack in Malahide one day and the training session was about 35 minutes and he said to me, ‘What did you think of that, Frank?’. I said that it was pretty short and he said, ‘Remember they are all professionals. They’re fit, they’re smart, I only need to work out a couple of set pieces with them. I don’t need to run the shit out of them’.”

Frank, who is now working primarily in real estate in the Boston area after getting out of the hospitality sector, says that those years as Jack’s “unofficial PA” were among the most memorable of a highly eventful life. He believes that he was brought into the inner sanctum of the most successful Irish football team in history for one main reason.

“He was an amazing man. He said to me one time, ‘You know Frank, you are with me for a reason.’. I said what’s that? He said, ‘You’re not a yes man. I know if I ask you do something, it will be done, and I know that if there is something wrong, you won’t yes me to death’.”

Frank by name and frank by nature.