A minute’s applause marked the passing of Jack Charlton ahead of Rovers’ game with West Brom as football paid tribute to ‘an iconic figure’.

The World Cup winner passed away at the age of 85 on Friday, the former Republic of Ireland boss having been diagnosed with lymphoma and also had dementia.

Tony Mowbray was a youngster on the terraces during Charlton’s four years in charge of boyhood club Middlesbrough between 1973 and 1977, and a then making his way in the first team during his second spell in 1983.

Mowbray also met Charlton during his own tenure at Boro, when Charlton would attend matches, while the pair would also meet at various functions in the north east.

And for Mowbray, just for Charlton, part of the England team that lifted the World Cup 1966, to know his name was an amazing feeling.

“He was my manager at Middlesbrough for a while,” Mowbray recalled.

“As a boy growing up, from 1973 through to 1977 Jack Charlton was an iconic figure for a young boy, nine or 10.

“He used to collect the tracksuit tops off all the lads, pat them on head, the manager on the pitch was something I always remembered.

“He had some great players of course, Souness and Mills, Foggon and Armstrong, they had a good team Middlesbrough. They won the old Second Division with a record number of points and then finished right up there the following season in the top flight.

“Jack is an iconic figure in Middlesbrough and he came back after the club hit the buffers really, almost going in to liquidation. I was a young player on the cusp of the first-team when Jack came and he was larger than life, didn’t mix his words, training was basic to the point of if you were a striker you had to get after the ball, if you were a defender you had to head it and give it to someone who could pass it forward.

“He was a great character, a great guy.

“Later on in his life I would meet him at dinners, he would come to Boro matches when I was in charge and he was just a very nice, humble man from the north.

“But anyone who loves football, seeing the World Cup final, watching that amazing Leeds team of the late 60s and early 70s, for me as a young guy it was amazing to meet someone like him.

“Later in life, just the fact he knew my name when he came to watch games, he was an iconic figure.

“Everyone who loves football knows that team that won the World Cup and how iconic they were and it’s sad for football.

“But an amazing legacy. I played with a lot of lads, Bernie Slaven and Tony Cascarino, who went on to do amazing things with Ireland, all the Irish lads at Celtic loved him to bits.

“Listening to the stories on the radio of big Cas and people like that, he’ll be sadly missed, a great loss and a great human being in my time being around him, a football man through and through.”