"The Hit Parade"

Football used to be full of honest fellas who'd kick you all day and drink with you all night. Now, they'll dive to get you sent off and can't take a tackle. When did the game change?

It is football's great paradox: it is a man's game, But also the beautiful game. For a century and a half, the two have nestled uncomfortably – silk and steel brain and brawn artistry and aggravation – yet their constant flux has been fundamental to the game’s all-consuming appeal. And over the decades, the personification of football’s rough edge has been The Hard Man.

From Wilf Copping to Tommy Smith, Giorgio Ferrine to Claudio Gentile, hard men have weaved themselves into the fabric of football from the moment 19th-century law formulator CW Allcock declared: “By all means, let us have hacking.” So hacking we had – and plenty of it – with the aggressors acting, in the words of Michael Parkinson, as “the salt in the stew”.

“These lads say to themselves, ‘I’m not going to be pushed about’, opined Vinnie Jones in his infamous Soccer’s Hard Men. “A lot of supporters look for that because they all want to be leaders themselves – they want to be the boss. Would you want Gary Lineker in the trenches with you or would you want Vinnie Jones? At the end of the day, you know Vinnie Jones will get out of the trench and run towards the enemy.”

The hard man will give it and take it in equal measure without complaint, for among his peers, there is an unspoken, almost biblical ethos: humility and honour are the creed. “Get a whack and give a whack and, clichéd as it sounds, have a beer afterwards,” says Mick Harford, who made a mockery of the archetype that hard men played in defence or midfield during the 1980s and ‘90s. “I was playing against Coventry once and big Sam Allardyce’s elbow caught me a treat. The lights went out. I had 70 stitches and was in hospital for four days. You could see my teeth through my lip. It taught me a lesson – to look after myself. I bore Sam no grudge.”
It was no different back in the black-and-white 1950s. “In my day you could get your bollocks kicked off,” recalls Bolton legend Nat Lofthouse. “The difference was that then the defender who did it would walk around the pitch with you afterwards and help you find them.”

Over the past decade, however, football has been so meticulously sanitised that the hard men have become almost extinct. Once upon a time, not so many years ago, the game was riddled with hatchet men and hard-cases. Try to compile a list of them now and you’ll struggle to find a first team. The game has clearly gone soft.

Last season included all manner of tabloid-fanned contretemps that would barely have registered in the past: the Bowyer/Dyer happy-slapping; Wayne Rooney’s three-match ban for putting his palm in Tal Ben Haim’s face; Blackburn becoming Public Enemies No.1-11 for a few over-zealous tackles. “Football’s a non-contact sport now,” smiles Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, the legendary Chelsea enforcer of the 1970s. “I don’t think there are any tough players about these days. They’re all pussyfoots.”

If Chopper’s right – and wise men don’t argue with Chopper – how did it come to this? And why?

Trace the hard-man lineage back far enough and you come to the Reverend Edward Thring, the headmaster of Uppingham School in the 1870s. Reverend Thring was a crucial figure in the development of masculinity and sport, particularly football, in the Victorian era. A man who had strict ideas on how men should play the game of football – and the game of life. His pupils were to be hard on the pitch, and anything but off it. Thring railed against the “self-pollution” of masturbation, which brought “early and dishonoured graves”. Any Uppingham boy caught fiddling was immediately expelled, but dirty play on the football pitch was certainly encouraged.

If Thring seemed mildly crackers, then Frank Barson of Watford, Villa and Manchester United, among, others was, utterly, gloriously off his rocker. With his sinister, greaseback barnet and a zig-zagging nose so battered that it made Steve Bruce look like an advert for plastic surgery, Barson spread terror through English football in the 1920s. He proudly boasted of his friendship with the notorious Fowler brothers – who were later hanged for murder – and once had to be smuggled out of Goodison Park after a particularly ‘zesty’ display.

Barson doubtless lamented not being in his boots for the eruption of football’s first truly legendary kicking match – the Battle Of Highbury in June 1934, when England hosted world champions Italy. It was Wilf ‘Iron Man’ Copping’s finest hour. The Italians made the mistake of nailing two of his Arsenal team-mates early on: “They started it,” Copping remembered. “Then me and Jack [Barker, of Leeds] got stuck into them and put three of the bastards off the field in 10 minutes.”

Back then, men were men. Some men, however, were bastards. “I have a team of bastards,” boasted Derby manager of the ‘50s, Harry Storer. “And I’m the biggest bastard of all.” Even the sine die banning of Rangers’ Willie Woodburn in 1954, for racking up five red cards in his career, could not deter them. That same year came the Battle of Berne, a slugfest between the tough nuts of Brazil and the Magnificent Magyars of Hungary in the World Cup quarter-final. Three players were sent off, but kick-off didn’t occur until the final whistle. “Players clashed in the tunnel and a small war broke out,” recalls Hungary coach Gustav Sebes. “Everyone was having a go; fans, players and officials.” One Hungarian was even said to have bottled a Brazilian in the face.

Believe it or not, that was mere handbags compared to the punch-up that was the Battle of Santiago between Italy and the host Chile at the 1962 World Cup. “The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game,” wheezed the BBC’s David Coleman, surely trying to drum up viewing figures.

Trouble brewed long before the match, when two Italian journalists spent weeks labelling Santiago a poverty-stricken dump full of loose women; before kick-off, the Chileans rejected a gift of carnations from the Italian players.

The first foul took 12 seconds, the first red card 12 minutes – Italy’s Giorgio Ferrini, who refused to leave the pitch and was subsequently dragged off kicking and screaming by a group of policemen. It took eight minutes for the game to restart. Later the Chilean left-back Leonel Sanchez, the son of a professional boxer, broke the nose of Italian captain Humberto Maschio with a belting left hook. When the English referee Ken Ashton, who hadn’t seen it, did nothing, Mario David took thinks into his own hands, subjecting Sanchez to a kung-fu kick to the nexk that resulted in another red. “I wasn’t reffing a football match,” Aston said, “I was acting as an umpire in military manoeuvres.” Chile’s 2-0 win was an afterthought.

The golden age of hard men, forever viewed through claret-tinted spectacles, had truly arrived. Its poster boy was Dave Mackay, a 5ft 8in Scot with tree-trunk thighs and a mud-splattered chest. The man-against-boy picture of Mackay, teeth gritted, muscles bursting out of his shirt, collaring a visibly terrified Billy Bremner by the scruff of the neck was the most iconic hard-man image of all until Vinnie Jones gave Paul Gascoigne a quick medical in 1988.

“Mackay was frightening,” remembers Billy McNeill. “If you clattered him he never said a word. He got back up, dusted himself down and gave you the sort of look that made you think ‘What Have I done?’” Mackay may not have talked the talk, but he certainly walked the walk. Once, when he was carried off on a stretcher, his broken leg at an obscene angle and spectators wincing, he sat with his arms folded as if to say ‘Is something the matter’? He was the definitive strong, silent type.

But, in the best traditions, Mackay could play too. “I get so annoyed when I hear people talk about Mackay in terms of his tackling ability alone,” says Frank McLintock. “He had marvellous skill. In training he would do tricks you wouldn’t believe.” Though they could look after themselves, these men could look after the ball too: they were proper footballers.

“If I was there just to kick people, I don’t think I’d have played at the highest level for 21 years, do you?” challenges Chopper Harris. His peer Norman Hunter was the PFA’s inaugural player of the year in 1974. “They are the type of players,” concludes McLintock, “who win you league titles.”

The lazy stereotype of the hard man – talentless, brainless, nasty pieces of work – is consistently compromised, even in the modern era. Take Mark Hughes, a barely-audible Welshman off the pitch but a fire breathing dragon on it. Or the infamous Terry Hurlock, who Tony Cascarino once recalled saying: “I love newborn babies. They are beautiful even when they make a mess in their nappy.” Nor are they stupid: Jim Drury, a lower-league hatchet man who “stopped counting” at 10 red cards, was recently nominated as a member of the International Society Of Poets.

The code of honour remained – give it, take it, like a man – but now there was a colder, more clinical awareness of what the hard man could do for his team. Liverpool’s Tommy Smith made no bones about intimidating people with a few words of wisdom (normally “Do that again and I’ll break your back”), while Stiles’ rugged approach was able to totally subdue the great Eusebio in the 1968 European Cup Final and the 1966 World Cup semi-final. Pele limped sadly out of that World Cup after Portugal’s Joao Morais kicked him here, there and everywhere, proving, as if proof were needed, that Britain didn’t have a monopoly on footballing brutes. For his services to football in Spain, Real Madrid centre-back Goyo Benito was memorably described as “an utter bastard”.

But England it was that produced perhaps the dirtiest match of all time. The 1970 FA Cup Final replay between Chelsea and Don Revie’s Leeds vintage – pound for pound, probably the hardest team in history – was a two-hour gorefest so brutal it’s surprising the recent DVD release didn’t require cuts from the censors. When it was re-refereed by David Elleray by modern rules 25 years later, he whipped out 20 yellow cards and six reds – and that was 10 years ago. “We’d have been down to five-a-side by half-time by today’s rules,” smirks Chopper.

Yet for all the pain, there were very few careers ended or serious injuries inflicted by the hard men. There was an implicit etiquette: it might have been war, but nobody went over the top. “The genuine hard men rarely inflicted serious injury on you,” says McNeill. “What they did was let you know you were in a game. It was the sneaky characters who were the real nasty types. A lot of them were cowards who set out to deliberately injure an opponent.”

The over-the-ball challenge became more prevalent in the 1980s. It can be traced back to the World Cup in Spain in 1982, when Diego Maradona was repeatedly banjoed by the ruthless Italian hatchet-man Claudio Gentile, a man with all the moral compunction and capacity for mercy of Michael Corleone. More infamously, Patrick Battison received some impromptu dentistry from German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher in a challenge so savage that he lost three teeth and needed oxygen in the dressing-room afterwards.

And so it continued, through a series of career-threatening challenges, which ultimately came home to roost in the legal challenges of the 1990s: Neal Simpson on Iain Durrant; Gavin Maguire on Danny Thomas; Vinnie Jones on Gary Stevens.

While the authorities deliberated, the hard men made hay. As hooliganism reahed an inglorious peak off the field, so it did on it. ‘Butcher of Bilbao’ Andoni Goikoetxea earned a 16-match ban by shattering Maradona’s leg and celebrated by placing the offending boot in a glass cage. Mark Dennis’s hot head earned him 12 red cards; Aston Villa’s Allan Evans even complained to the PFA after one incident, prompting Dennis’s considered response: “Obviously he’s trying to harm my family.”

Harm was certainly on the minds of Uruguay’s Mexico 86 squad. Tipped as dark horses, they concentrated on sending their opponents to the knacker’s yard. By the time of their game against Scotland, the maths were clear: draw and go through, lose and go out. Jose Batista saw red within 56 seconds for hacking Gordon Strachan; reduced to 10 men, Batista’s team-mates took up the baton and kicked Scotland to a 0-0 draw. An SFA suit called them the “scum of the earth”. And if there was any doubt that the South Americans could still do barbaric with the best of them, Argentinian Daniel Passarella was banned while at Sampdoria for hoofing a bellboy.

Irrespective of nationality, many hard men had a capacity for the unhinged. Cascarino recalls Hurlock being goaded about an upcoming clash with Vinnie Jones: “Out of nothing he leapt form his chair, charged to the entrance a ripped the door off its hinges, then sat back down calmly without saying a word. We left it there.”

Still, Jones had seen worse. “Mick Harford is the hardest player I’ve ever met,” he says. “Dead eyes, face like [gruesome Hollywood gunslinger] Jack Palance. He could chill Iceland.” Legend has it that he once sparked out six men in a pub within 30 seconds.

Then there was Graeme Souness, who made shinbones the world over quiver. If a paragon of footballing impiety like Jack Charlton says you’ve been “a bit of a bad lad at times”, no further recommendation is needed. Souness was a majestic footballer – but he was also a beast, a Glasgow kiss on legs. The whole chilling package was topped off by a moustache that almost dripped evil. And like all the greats, he led by example: on his debut as Rangers player-boss in 1986, he was sent off inside 30 minutes. his blood had been brought to the boil by a mulleted Hibs player winning the ball cleanly from behind; Souness, haring round in pursuit of revenge, nobbled the wrong mullet with a brutal kick from behind. No matter: he was red-carded. As Souness walked off with what looked like a wry grin, the Hibs player was carried off sadly, confusion and dumb animal hurt etched all over his face.

Worse was to come. Against Steaua Bucharest in March 1988, as the ball rolled beautifully along as if on a bowling green, Souness somehow contrived to stud Iosif Rotaiu within an inch of his sex life. The Romanian was carried off; Souness walked.

A few months later came another of football’s famous reducers: Vinnie Jones on Steve McMahon in the FA Cup Final. Wimbledon were given no chance against an extraordinary Liverpool side but, when Jones took McMahon out with a viciously late challenge in the first five minutes, the tone was set for one of the game’s biggest upsets. “If their top geezer gets sorted out early doors, you win,” snarled Jones. “That’s what happened in the Cup Final.”

In the hardman’s heyday, the start of each match offered a window of opportunity. “The referee would never book you for the first tackle,” remembers Hunter, “Sometimes you hardly saw the player again. We called it the freebie.” And everyone was at it, Nobby Stiles, remembered Sir Matt Busby’s quiet creed: “Show him you are there, Norrie, in the first 10 minutes.”

The psychological power that a hard man can wield is considerable. “They’re school bullies, basically,” says sports psychologist Andy Barton. “They sense a weakness in certain people. Usually subconsciously, that person will then start projecting a future of things going wrong. They’ll get pictures of Vinnie Jones, or whoever, coming up behind them. The body reacts and is constricted – by tension, anxiety, fear – so you’re not going to play anywhere near your best. You mentally rehearse something you don’t want to happen. You become their prey.”

Harris puts it another way: “I used to know that if a player was a bit milky then it was 1-0 to me every time.” And 1-0 to his team, as the 1970 FA Cup Final replay showed. In the first match Eddie Gray had run Chelsea ragged; not in the replay. “Our manager Dave Sexton told me: ‘You take care of Eddie Gray’, remembers Chopper fondly. Sure enough, a savage, knee-high shortcut through the back of Gray set the tone for the replay. “People say Dave Webb [who scored the winning goal] won the Cup for Chelsea,” says Chopper. “I think I did that with the tackle I done.”

Italia 90 was a landmark tournament for hard men: the romance surrounding England’s glory tends to obscure the reality of a horrible, nasty farrago of physical excess. It bagan with the unforgettable Cameroonian 1-2-3 on Claudio Caniggia and ended, pretty much, with Gazza’s tears. It was an ending and a beginning: the gentrification of football was underway, and the net was closing around hard men.

The change of values took a while – Gascoigne himself got away with attempted murder in the 1991 Cup Final – but then came the Premier League and Sky, and football had a big brother: nothing escaped the cameras now. In the same year, the video Soccer Hard Men was released. It was intended as a jokey, blokey celebration, but it earned Jones a then-record fine of £20,000 and a suspended six-month ban.

Jones got out at the right time, playing his last game in 1998, the year in which FIFA played its own reducer by outlawing the tackle from behind. “The medical committee studied the case of Marco van Basten,” says George Cumming, FIFA’s head of refereeing at the last World Cup, of the striker who was effectively forced to retire at 28, “and took that as the symbol of the effect this kind of tackle can have on players. The instruction [to outlaw the tackle from behind] was given before France 98, and there were fears that it would be a World Cup of red cards. That didn’t happen – it was done sensibly, the message got over, and players didn’t dive into challenges as much as they used to.”

Instead they dived out of them: football’s new problem became ‘simulation’, although its white-collar nature meant it attracted far less sanction. But does all this mean that football is becoming a non-contact sport?

If so, it’s a sign of the times. Masculinity has changed: these days men wear pink, have long hair (although Passarella banned it when he took over as Argentina coach) and listen to Coldplay, Boys do cry. Football is merely imitating life: when Chelsea won the Premiership last season, John Terry said: “I just want to break down.” Football used to be hard as nails – these days it prefers a manicure. The consequence is that in 2005, any Tom, Dickov or Savage can pronounce themselves a hard man – and, with enough coverage, can convince the public. A recent TalkSport poll for the hardest team of all time included Alan Smith.

The reality is that most of them aren’t fit to sharpen the legendary hard men’s studs. “In my day,” says Chopper Harris, “I didn’t see anybody stick the nut on anybody, or roll around trying to get players booked. You’re not brave doing that, are you? Let’s see you go in for a proper 50-50.”

Yet a few authentic bruisers have survived. Roy Keane satisfies all the classical criteria, Andy Todd could hold his own in any era, while Duncan Ferguson is still going strong. If his spiritual predecessor Harford was nicknamed Monster, then Ferguson is the Incredible Hulk. Even at his most docile Ferguson – who with an almost touching clarity once observed: “OK, so I’m no Snow White” – has a face that looks like Bruce Banner going off on one; he was the first player to go to jail over an on-pitch assault, and once knocked seven bells out of two chancers who unwisely attempted to burgle him and quickly found out that they wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. And his comical attempt to throttle Leicester’s Steffen Freund two seasons ago deserved to become as iconic as Mackay on Bremner and Jones on Gascoigne.

But Ferguson, Todd and Keane are the exceptions to the rule, players caught in the cross hairs of the rule makers and match officials. With the FA’s disciplinary bods keeping a closer eye on their actions than ever before, their days are surely numbered. At the current rate of knots, The Hard Man will be extinct within 20 years. Gone, but thanks to the scars and the creaking shins, unlikely to be forgotten.

Rob Smyth

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