MY UNCLE was a friend of the family of Mal Charles, brother of the great John, and when I was around eight or nine years old, he gave me a Christmas present of a red autograph book.

It already contained the signatures of the Wales rugby and football teams of that period, together with those of the Cardiff rugby and football teams. I still treasure the book to this day.

Best of all, it had obviously been passed around the changing room itself to be signed and so it smelled of embrocation — perhaps it is a trick of the nose but I swear that I can still smell the embrocation to this day, around 40 years on.

Each of the first 10 pages was packed with autographs, yet that of John Charles was the only one on its own particular page. It was as if all the great players in two types of football simply could not bring themselves to sign on the same page as the great man and allowed him the deference of space.

Yet in Wales we all want our sporting heroes to show humility. In one way it is not an attractive trait because we distrust elitism in many walks of life and start complaining about people getting above themselves.

But it is true that the most revered of all Welsh sportsmen are those who could perform their wondrous brilliance on the field and yet become normal people away from the field. Howard Winstone, the wonderful boxer and World champion, became just another bloke in the pub between bouts and Gareth Edwards was always renowned for his approachability away from the field of play.

The reverence for John Charles springs from the same idea that you must at the one time be of supreme brilliance but must still relate to the population as a whole.

Charles was always magnificently approachable no matter the sheer number of inebriated bar-room tacticians and other experts who wanted to buttonhole him.

God alone knows how he managed to keep his legendary patience in the streets of Turin during his God-like period with Juventus and how he managed to keep the quiet smile on his face during his later and less successful sojourn in Rome with the Roma club. Even when he came back from Italy to play out his time with Cardiff City, he seemed largely unchanged. In his Juventus years, he had become famous for being so talented that he would put Juventus ahead from the centre forward position and then revert to centre half to protect the lead.

When he came back to Ninian Park at the end of his career they even stuck him at sweeper and it was odd to see this regal figure calmly clearing up the mess caused by others in front of him, others with far more mundane talents.

Unquestionably to those of us brought up in the contact sport of rugby union, the most amazing thing about our hero from football was that he was never cautioned or sent off. That was amazing in his careers with Leeds and Cardiff and Wales, because he would always be fiercely marked. But considering that he came up on a weekly basis against some of the maniac defenders in Serie A, then the fact that not once did he retaliate in any measure becomes staggering.

In a rather painful way he returned to the rank and file of life with his business travails late in life Close friends of his were rather dismayed that it took the legions of his admirers some time to come through with the sustenance that he deserved.

Eventually enough people did come through and allow Charles in adversity to retain the supreme dignity he had always shown in triumph.

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