Seconds before Charlton secured a place in the League One playoff final Nathan Jones, a born-again Christian, dropped to his knees, clasped his palms and prayed. The fourth official had just told himthe game was up, the final whistle imminent. Jones got to his feet, looked to the skies and covered his face. Then, at full time, he crumpled into a shell, face down in the turf of his technical area. The footage went viral.
“People close to me said it was a bit over the top,” he says. “I was just in the moment. It wasn’t fabricated, it wasn’t because the TV cameras were there, because I didn’t realise they were. I wouldn’t say it was an out-of-body experience, but it was an outpouring of emotion, a deflation of all the pressures.”
Those stresses are long gone at Sparrows Lane where, 48 hours before leading his team on the Wembley sidelines, Jones devotes a chunk of his afternoon discussing his faith, how his love for wine snowballed while playing in Spain and country music. “Myself and Phil Chapple [the head of recruitment] watched 24 Hour Party People last night. Great film,” he says.
“That was the music I was brought up on. My dad loved Eric Clapton, Queen, Michael Jackson, so I was educated from there. I grew up in the 80s, probably the best era for bands and I caught the tail end of the Haçienda and indie era, which led into the 90s. I used to do a bit of DJing when I was a kid, when I was [a player] at Brighton, house music. I wasn’t any good but I had my decks and I love my music.”
Conversation slowly returns to those celebrations, via Spain. The co-owner Gabriel Brener, part of the Global Football Partners consortium that acquired Charlton almost two years ago, recently gave Jones a “wonderfully expensive” bottle of Ribera del Duero, one of his favourite reds. He does not profess to be a connoisseur, but his time at Badajoz and Numancia, in his early 20s, help.
“Growing up in a Welsh mining community and going to Cardiff and Luton you’re not exposed to too many vineyards, just your standard lagers. But there [in Spain] it was a more social thing, but not as we know it: dinners,cenas, good food. I like it – you can’t drink too much because it’s a bitch on the head, but it’s a way of relaxing and something I enjoy. I’ll drink it at the right time.”
Sunday evening, perhaps? “God willing, the best team wins – as long as it’s Charlton,” he says, smiling. He elaborates on his emotions last week. “I’m not a highly educated, suited-and-booted, calm individual. I’ve had to find ways of competing with top-end people and that’s how I’ve lived my life. I’ve had to work hard, I’ve had to fight for everything. At times it consumes me and everyone in my life. So when these big moments happen, I go with the natural reaction, not necessarily the one that is the most politically correct or the most suitable for everyone.”
In many ways it was in keeping with his heart-on-sleeve persona. In March, after his team scored twice in stoppage time to earn a comeback victory at Leyton Orient – Charlton’s opponents at Wembley on Sunday – he jumped the advertising hoardings, fist-pumped on repeat and roared with delight. In his second spell at Luton, after a win at Swansea, he charged into the away end beating his chest to celebrate a win with the travelling support. This is Jones, a fiery and fiercely driven Welshman from Blaenrhondda, a village in the valleys. “As a kid, you could walk the streets at 10pm. We played hide and seek, football until it was pitch black.”
These days, Jones says, people prefer conservative and composed, but the 51-year-old has never been an anodyne character. He acknowledges his honesty has cost him in the past. He was burnt by the Premier League spotlight at Southampton,where he was sacked94 days into a three-and-a-half-year contract after eight defeats in nine top-flight games.
“I’m not a big fan of society now,” he says. “Because of social media and people’s attitudes, you only have to say something in error or even in ignorance and suddenly your career can be over. That’s the gravity of things. You have to adapt. There are a billion keyboard warriors that are just looking for something to complain about and someone they can sabotage. It’s not a forgiving world, it’s not an understanding world, it’s a world where people want their pound of flesh.”
He is back on familiar ground. His first full-time coaching role was with Charlton’s Under-21s, when his team, including Nick Pope, triumphed in the professional development league in 2013. The buildings at Charlton’s training base are adorned with images of their heroes of yesteryear including Chris Powell and Jason Pearce, now an academy coach. Walls are decorated with posters of academy alumni such as Ezri Konsa, Ademola Lookman and Joe Gomez.
Then there are the pictures from the last time Charlton were in this position, when they clinchedpromotion via Wembley in 2019. A turbulent past means the shadow of Alan Curbishley, who left in 2006, still lingers, but this is a new era. Will Jones dress up for the occasion? “I used to be a suit manager but I never felt comfortable: I’m a tracksuit, casual manager. I like to feel free, I like to feel that I can get about the place and I’m not sure I can do that in a pair of shoes and a tie.”
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A couple of months ago, mindful of the run-in and the value of rest, in a post-match interview he told his squad to steer clear of Bluewater, leading the shopping mall to respond with a playful video of security staff searching the premises with head shots of Charlton players.
Jones has galvanised the club. Birmingham are the only team in the top four tiers to have won more points than Charlton this calendar year. His side have kept 25 clean sheets in all competitions, five times as many as last season. The squad feeds off of Jones’s jack-in-a-box energy, but he is fastidious and forthright when required. The captain, Greg Docherty, tells of the “top-of-the-class homework” Jones had done when he met him as a free agent last summer. “I ended up selling myself to him,” Docherty says. “How did that happen?”
For Jones, whose father was a bricklayer and mother worked in a school, there is one constant. “You go through tough times, 30,000 fans not wanting you at their club,” he says, alluding to that testing period at Southampton. “In those occasions I always have an equilibrium in my life which is the Lord. Whenever I have good times, I go to God. Whenever I have bad times, I go to God. That enables me to function on a daily basis. I’ve had meteoric highs and I’ve had some very public lows, but it’s about how you come through and handle those.”
He has religious tattoos, including Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, across his back. Jones has a strong relationship with Matt Baker, Charlton’s longstanding chaplain. “We have a prayer group and there’s a big south-east London contingent in that before the game. I pray in my room, I have a quiet word myself. I don’t start a single day without prayer and reading.”
By 7am, Jones tends to have prayed, read the Bible and been for a run. “That way I get my spiritual and physical ‘food’ that I need early on. Then I try to be the best version of myself at work.” He makes the most of Greenwich Park on his doorstep. Other times he plots a path along the Thames. “I enjoyed running when I was a player, I loved it,” Jones says. “I don’t love it as much now. I do it now so I can burn calories and stay alive, because when you have a glass of wine and a packet of crisps, then that sits heavy.”
Which route will he choose on Sunday, when Charlton will be backed by almost 40,000 supporters at Wembley, some of whom are flying in from as far as Australia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uruguay. “The day of the game is the only day I don’t run,” he says. “I like to keep my energy because I need it.”