Maurice Setters, Manchester United defender and right-hand man to Jack Charlton in Ireland – obituary

Maurice Setters, who has died aged 83, was a footballer and coach who on the pitch was a solid and dependable presence as Manchester United began their long haul back from the Munich air disaster; later, as assistant to Jack Charlton, he helped to take the Republic of Ireland to unexpected heights in the international game.

Maurice Setters was born on December 16 1936 at Honiton in Devon, and began his career at Exeter City, making his debut in March 1954. He played nine more games the following season and was spotted by First Division West Bromwich Albion. Exeter were reluctant to accept the £3,000 offered by Albion but were strapped for cash and let him go.

West Brom were not quite “the Team of the Century” they had been described as earlier in the decade, but they remained one of the country’s top sides during Setters’s five years at the Hawthorns, reaching the 1957 FA Cup semi-finals and finishing in the top five for three seasons in a row between 1957 and 1960.

Eighty miles up the road at Old Trafford, Manchester United were on their way back from the Munich tragedy, when eight of the Busby Babes had been among the 23 people killed when the team’s plane crashed in Germany in February 1958.

Matt Busby was moving with the times and looking to turn his back three (two full-backs and a centre-half, the standard defensive set-up at the time) into a back four, emulating the visionary Brazilians and Hungarians. He needed a combative ball-winner – as well as a replacement for Wilf McGuinness, who had been forced to retire with a badly broken leg at 22 – and after consulting Bobby Charlton, who had played with Setters in the England Under-23s, he paid West Brom £30,000 for Setters in January 1960.

While Busby was a passionate believer in attractive, attacking football, such an approach also requires “hard men”, players with the stomach for a scrap, and Setters fitted the bill perfectly. He played well at Wembley in May 1963 – having been preferred to the up-and-coming Nobby Stiles – as Leicester City were beaten 3-1 in the FA Cup final, making up for a League season that had almost ended in relegation.

But Stiles’s progress increasingly put Setters’s place at risk, and in the 1964-65 season he played his last game, a 7-0 thrashing of Aston Villa, before being shipped out to Stoke City for a fee of £30,000; he had played 194 games for United in all competitions.

He spent two successful years at the Victoria Ground, but after he was injured in a game against Liverpool his place was taken by Alan Bloor, and in 1967 he moved to Coventry City, where he spent three good years – including nine games as a guest for Cleveland Stokers in the US – before ending his playing career with a few games for Charlton Athletic in 1970.

On the international scene, he had turned out for England Schoolboys and the Youth team and played 16 times for the Under-23s. Alf Ramsey called him up for the initial 44-man squad for the 1966 World Cup, but he never won a full cap.

His first managerial job was at Doncaster Rovers; he joined in 1971 but suffered from the club’s policy of selling any player they could get money for. He was sacked in 1974, later winning a case for unfair dismissal.

He was out of the game until 1977, when Jack Charlton took him to Sheffield Wednesday as his assistant. “It was only £100 a week but it was a chance to get back into football,” Setters recalled.

The two had met many years before at Bobby Charlton’s wedding, at which Setters was best man, and the two had clicked, later gaining their coaching badges together at Lilleshall, where they found that they had similar ideas about how the game should be played.

Together they hauled the once-mighty Wednesday, who were languishing in the Third Division, back up the ladder, winning promotion in 1980. Believing he had taken the Owls as far as he could, Charlton moved to Newcastle in 1984, taking Setters with him.

A year later Setters was at home watching television when the news came on that Charlton had resigned. “Eventually I managed to track him down,” Setters recalled. “I asked him what was going on and you know what he said? ‘Oh, I forgot all about you Maurice!’ ”

Setters stayed on at St James’ Park for a while, “but it was never going to work out with the new manager Willie McFaul. I got paid up and left.”

Towards the end of 1985 Charlton was appointed manager of Ireland and a few months later he came calling for Setters. A run of success began that elevated Charlton to near-sainthood in the Republic.

The side qualified for the 1988 European Championship in West Germany, their first major tournament finals, where although they failed to exit the group stage they did have the satisfaction of beating England 1-0 with a goal by Ray Houghton and finishing above them in the table.

But the style of play inculcated by Setters and “Big Jack” had its detractors: talented midfielders like Liam Brady and Kevin Sheedy developed cricks in the neck, it was said, as they watched thumped clearances sail over their heads in classic “route one” football.

None the less, the squad as a whole loved the relaxed, often boozy, culture, and the chemistry between Charlton and Setters was part of the package. “We get on well,” Setters said at the time. “But don’t think that we don’t have our ups and downs. I give him my opinion and he gives his. But it works. He is blunt, but that is the type of person that he has always been. Basically we have the same idea about players and on patterns of play. We don’t like taking risks. That was made clear to the players when we took over.”

The formula worked brilliantly in the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The Irish met England again in the group stage, drawing 1-1, and finished second to them. In the round of 16 they beat Romania on penalties – the veteran defender David O’Leary scored the winning spot-kick – then lost by a single goal to the tournament hosts, Italy, in the quarter-finals.

As well as sharing coaching and motivational duties with Big Jack, Setters also scouted for potential recruits – “that means I am at a game every day of the week except Friday. That’s my day off,” he told a reporter – and the team benefited, not without controversy, from calling up “Anglos” with the right parents or grandparents, such as John Aldridge, Tony Cascarino and Mick McCarthy (as well as the Glaswegian, Ray Houghton).

Missing out on the 1992 European Championship finals despite being unbeaten in qualifying, they reached the 1994 World Cup (unlike England). There, in the US, they had the distinction of participating in the only World Cup group whose teams finished level on both points and goal difference.

They gained revenge over Italy when another Ray Houghton goal gave them a 1-0 victory, and advanced from the group only to lose to the Netherlands in the round of 16. Two years later they lost to the Dutch again in a play-off and missed out on Euro 96; it was Charlton and Setters’s last match.

Setters could be as spiky and uncompromising off the pitch as he was on it: when Charlton resigned, the Irish FA assumed that Setters would follow, but he carried on turning up for work until he was sacked. He sued for unfair dismissal and – supported by Big Jack in court – he eventually reached a settlement.

In retirement he lived in South Yorkshire, and in later years suffered from dementia.

Maurice Setters, born December 16 1936, died November 22 2020