No Football Hard Men anymore

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The caponised (= bollocks off) so called Hingerland hexibition in the Euros was pathetic. I do not call them the Euro Girls because the real England Women’s Team has more balls than the lot of them put together (no comment on their sexuality intended) and has won the Euros. There was a time when England were admired and feared for the physicality of their football. You knew when Nobby Stiles took his teeth out there was going to be some carnage. Likewise Norman (Bites Yer Legs) Hunter who took no prisoners, none that could walk away after.

Johnny Foreigner, principally the Italians and the Spaniards in their tight shorts and oh so tuggable long hair came to cheat and foul aided by bent referees and oh so corrupt FIFA officials. Our lads accommodated them without complaint settling liberties on the pitch, in the tunnel or in the dressing room after. No protection from the officials if you were an England player. You had to be hard and well practised in the shin and ankle spike, the nut to the nose and the raking boot to the inside leg. Nobby was also known to carry his own whistle to confuse matters when in the penalty area.

Thuggery is not just the preserve of neanderthals, it requires skill, intelligence and fine judgement. A different area of expertise in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I recall practising the old Jocko’s handshake, the Glasgow kiss, the Newkie hello, the Sarf Lahndon greeting time and again to get the timing right. Just as the nut is about to come in you drop your head and your opponent ends up nutting himself on your nut you see. “Wasn’t me ref. He done ‘imself guvnor”.

The rot set in with Alf Ramsey. Despised being as common as muck and took elocution lessons to try to speak proper. Only half worked, he ended up sounding like a camp jockey, was in charge during the ’66 World Cup and got himself a knighthood. (Nearest Southgate will get to a knighthood is to say goodnight). Anyway Sir Alf let matters go to his head and tried to clean up the England game by turning it into a numbers game – positional charts, 3,4,2, 2,4,2 – all that malarkey. Plus the fatal concept of holding on to a lead, however slim, to the bitter end because going on the attack exposes your team to counters. Alas Southgate has swallowed that tactic but without the hard men required to patrol the pitch and lock the enemy down.

I leave you to debate the merits of Vinnie Jones as England manager.

Nominated by Sir Limply Stoke.

Seconded by Sam Beau.

I`d like to second this cunting.

Jack Charlton said he had a `little black book` …

And who could forget Billy Bremner?

Banned for life, he was. That`s got to be the greatest red card of all time – and he wasn`t even on the fucking pitch.

Both played for Leeds, coincidentally: The filthiest team in the league at that time. Great days.

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national football museum

97 thoughts on “No Football Hard Men anymore”

  2. I recall that Jackie Charlton lifted one Ferencvaros (?) player by his face clean off the ground. Leeds were dirty buggers – The Damned Utd I well worth a watch.

  3. Bunch of pansies now wouldn’t last 5 minutes playing the old game.
    Load of overpaid soft cunts.

  4. When players are being paid tens of thousands every week and have a career worth millions then gratuitous injuries are no longer accepted.

    Only a fucking cunt would injure a fellow professional and put him out of the game for months, perhaps ending his playing days forever.

  5. I think perhaps we should retrain sportsmen from other disciplines with a view to becoming soccer hard men. Now he has won silver at the Olympics, let’s retrain Tom “Hammerhead” Daley to be a really attacking centre forward. He might not do much damage with his feet, but he would be a dab hand inflicting injuries with his knitting needles.

  6. Sid ‘Bonecruncher’ Hardcastle and Bert ‘Mad Bastard’ Fosdyke.
    The hardest pair of centre-backs ever to grace the game.

    Responsible for 7 on-pitch murders, 39 broken legs (4 of which needed amputation) and the loss of 8 ears, 2 eyes, 3 fingers, 15 toes and 12 testicles.

    A good honest pair of lads. Neither was ever sent off.

    • I remember seeing Hardcastle getting hacked down by Harry ‘Mauler’ Grimshaw at Villa Park back in the late fifties, resulting in a broken leg and a ruptured tendon.

      After getting a quick swab from the old magic sponge, Hardcastle got to his feet and broke Grimshaw’s nose with a flailing right hook, before the players shook hands and carried on.

      Men were men in them days. Both players were harder than a joiner’s nailbag, but fair.

      • Yes, I remember that match too Ron. Wasn’t that the day of Villa’s record crowd of 137,000, most of whom crawled under or jumped over the turnstiles to avoid paying the 6d gate money?

        Also I well remember ‘Mad Bastard’ Fosdyke colliding with the nation’s favourite brick shithouse, Alf ‘Knuckledragger’ Savage, in a local derby. Played in torrential rain and 6 inches of mud, Fosdyke didn’t seek medical attention for his 5 broken ribs and ruptured spleen until after the 90 minutes. What a player.

        Men were men alright. They all trained on 12 pints and 20 Woodbines a day and their main hobby outside of football was beating up the wife.

      • Indeed it was Geordie. 137,431 to be precise. I’ve still got the match programme; cost me 3d or 3 pee in old money.

        I well remember the infamous Savage incident as well. The ref was going to send him off before ‘Knuckledragger’ floored him with a knee to the nuts. The linesman took over as ref and understandably, nothing more was said about the matter.

      • You two are really showing your age. But did you know an interesting bit of trivia; the lad who brought on the half-time oranges and famously got a kick up the arse for his tardiness was none other than a young Walter ‘Lofty’ Banks, Albion’s notorious inside-forward.

        I think it was Banks who once quipped about his career “I maimed at least 30 opponents into early retirement, not including the wops and dagos”.

      • My dad told me about Stan Crowther.
        Played for United after the Munich crash, he also played for Villa. Apparently he was a right hard bastard.

  7. Obviously I’m biased as to the Leeds being the dirtiest team …they could all look after themselves with a kick one kick all mantra, but don’t pretend that most teams didn’t have plenty of the same .

    And besides all that Leeds at one point had the best side in the country as McLintock of arsenal and Osgood both admitted, praise indeed from two big rivals ….I quite like the dirty tag it means people remember you 👍….today’s 🧚‍♂️ wouldn’t get over the white line FACT.

  9. Try very hard to imagine any player from past decades “taking the knee” or wearing fucking rainbow laces etc.

    Modern players are a set of cunts.

    Virtue signalling soy cunts.

    • Like I said in another nom last week(?) imagine a player going on to the field in bright Pink boots 30 or 40 years ago……he’d have been fucking crucified………

  10. Dave Mackay

    Probably the last hard man that Tottenham Hotspur ever employed.

    • Graham Roberts was a bit of a thug.

      Justin Edinburgh (RIP) also knew how to scythe down opposition strikers when the need arose.

      Neither quite as deadly as Big Dave though.

      • LOL. Good one, LL.

        I saw ‘twiglet legs’ Sicknote play many times. What a fucking useless cunt he was. To be fair, he did blend in well with the other 7 or 8 other useless cunts in the Spurs team at that time. I mean, Andy Sinton FFS.

      • Lol Darren Anderson aka Sicknote.

        Tottenham Hotspur surely must be the biggest of all under achievers.

        Everton probably run them very close but at least they’ve won the league title in the post steam train era

        They now appear to have a manager who might well do something should he be backed, but I’m sure the board and the inherent spinelessness of the club will fuck everything up once again.

      • HJ – You talking about that Everton cunt Dyche or that Spurs cunt Poppadomolous or whatever his name is?

        I hate Dyche after he got all woke at Burnley after a Burnley fan paid to have a plane fly a banner saying “White Lives Matter Burnley”. Dyche had a hissy. Of course that happened during the whole knee bending fiasco supporting BLM. An organisation which has since been outed as corrupt, racist, anarchistic and a vehicle for funnelling money to the ‘leaders’ to help them buy expensive houses, cars, etc. Hmmm. That fan’s life got fucked over that. I wonder if Dyche and his ilk have apologised and made amends given what we know now? Hmmm.

        As for the fat Aussie cunt at Spurs – he won’t amount to anything. He says all the right things, but he’ll achieve nothing. To make it big in the EPL you need deep pockets and a win at all costs mentality. Cunt Levy won’t spend the money and doesn’t know what winning is.

      • Indeed IY

        The Burn Loot Murder fiasco is a fucking embarrassment for all involved in its promotion.

        Talk about being on the wrong side of history.

        So many English clubs and players exposed themselves for the dim witted nasty cunts that they are.

  11. I’m going to be a slightly dissenting voice here.
    I’ve never been a lover of lesser skilled players deliberately kicking opponents because they’ve no other way of competing.
    Likewise, I’ve never had much time for self appointed ‘hard men’ like Vinny Jones making a career out of being a cheating bastard.
    However, I’m all for putting and end to the play acting and rolling around like they’ve been shot.
    Refs should be ordered, not advised, to book or send off any cunt who’s feigned injury.
    Not always easy, but if they leap up as soon as a free kick goes their way, it should be yellow or red card, no fucking about.
    Look, I’m not denigrating the old guard. If they saw red for dishing out some retribution, they usually had no complaints.
    But those chopping down players because they were out skilled we’re just dirty cunts.

    • Agreed.

      The cheats are a little more subtle nowadays.

      There are players that pretend to be injured when they have not even been touched.
      These players should be yellow carded and sent off for a second offence.

      But there are also players that are targeted for ‘special’ treatment by the opposition.

      These are usually the players who if they didn’t make a song and dance about being fouled would get no protection from the referee.

      If you want to watch alleged ‘hard men’ injuring the opposition then modern day football is not your game.

      • The only other solution, and something in line with the proposed concussion subs, is that any player down for more than 40 seconds must have an enforced rest period and a temporary replacement brought on.
        15 minutes should do the trick.
        That’ll stop the managers telling their players not to get up pretty smartish.

      • If a player is actually injured then he and his team shouldn’t be penalised.

      • Fair point. They tried the the tactic of getting them stretchered off, but so many sprung to life the moment they crossed the touch line, that didn’t work either.

      • Barcelona is the team that I support.

        When Busquets started playing for them he used to make a cunt of himself every time he was touched.
        The same could be said for Alves.

        It was sometimes embarrassing to watch.

        But without them bringing the minor fouls to the ref’s attention they would have been hacked to shreds.

        Neymar had to protect himself the same way.
        Unfortunately he did look like a cunt every time he went down.

        A brilliant footballer but a terrible actor.

    • Mention of Vinny Jones made me think back to that bunch of cunts known as Wimbledon FC. Lovingly portrayed as ‘The Crazy Gang’ in the media, like it was OK to basically assault your way through football matches.

      Back in the late ’90s/early 2000s I used to frequent WHL to watch Spurs and saw first hand the disgusting antics of the Wimbledon players. Standing on players’ boots, elbowing players on the blind side of the ref/lino, shirt pulling, various pushes and shoves, Achilles scrapes, etc. Most of this was done off the ball so attention was elsewhere. And of course, you hardly ever saw the full extent of the thuggery on TV because the cameras mostly follow the ball.

      Lest we not forget John Fashanu (Wimbledon “striker”) giving Gary Mabbut (Spurs captain) a fractured skull and eye socket in an ‘aerial challenge’ in ’93. What an absolute bastard.

      • I remember that. Fashanu was a dirty, violent cunt, along with his other ‘hard’ team mates like boss eyed Dennis Wise.

      • I fucking loathed that Wimbledon side.

        They were a disgrace to the sport.

    • I must admit it surprised me when it came out last year. The BBC really do pick them, don’t they?. Just wait till Kweer and the duckies leave politics for Radio 2.

      • I thought it was just that lad he was (allegedly) involved with. Good grief.

    • Surprised that Schofield hasn’t been fingered…
      …for doing a similar offence.

  14. All they need is an attacking rightwing manager with guts and an all white squad who won’t go running for cover when the going gets tough.

  15. In my mind the (almost) modern day hard man in football was Messi.

    He would be smashed on the pitch but would get on his feet, with few exceptions, almost immediately.

    On the rare occasions that he went down and stayed down you could be sure that he was injured and you wouldn’t see him for a month or two.

    • I always thought Paul Scholes was a tough bastard too. At only 5ft 6 he could dish it out when needed.

  16. I recall Easter Monday at Anfield 1988. United were 3-1 down to Liverpool, were down to ten men, and Steve McMahon was larging it all over the pitch.

    Fergie whispered something in Norman Whiteside’s ear on the bench, and Big Norm came on as sub.

    In a matter of minutes, Norman took out McMahon in spectacular – and vicious – style. He then karate chopped John Barnes on the neck, and then dispatched Ronnie Whelan with ruthless efficiency.

    The game ended 3-3. What a unit Whiteside was. 23 years of age amd an absolute monster.

  17. Graeme Souness and Bryan Robson’s duel in the 1983 FA Charity Shield was something to behold.

    Both at their absolute peak, no quarter asked or given.
    But the respect they had for one another. Robbo stopped Graeme getting sent off, and Souey had the highest regard for Robson.

    Both were remarkable players and their like will not be seen again. Souness was like Tommy Smith with a Rolls Royce engine. And Robson made Keane and Viera look like Hinge and Bracket. At his best, Robbo was like Platini with guts and balls like church bells.

    I know one thing. Neither Souness or Robson would have bottled out of decking Alan Shearer. They’d have done it, no question.

    • True. If Souness’s Yosser looks didn’t put the fear into you, his tackling would.

  18. Now the big Jessie’s roll around like a dog in fox shit if another player touches their shirt or disturbs their hair and makeup.

  19. Eric Cantona couldn’t half mix it. Took absolutely no shit. I recall him taking out half the Norwich side in one game, and Jimmy Hill blubbing about it on Match Of The Day.

    And when he went into the crowd at Selhurst Park. To twat that piece of shit Matthew Simmons. Absolutely classic.

    • Cantona – what a star. Skilful and a hard bastard. And that collar thing – cocky bastard, and he knew it.

  22. Those Italian defenders in the 70s and 80s were right hard fuckers.
    Claudio Gentile and Marco Tardelli being the hardest.

    • Didn’t see your post.

      True though. Juventus under Trappatoni won everything.

  23. That Raheem Sterling, well ‘ard.

    Only joking. Most Italian defenders of the eighties were brutal, especially Claudio Gentile.

    • Lazio Ultras. I remember their banner for games against Roma in the early noughties, ‘black team, Jewish supporters’. Me and a mate laughed our heads off. Imagine that in the ground during a BLM kneel-off.

      Forget all the supposed racism amongst Engish supporters, i suggest bedwetting media mouthpieces look further afield. The trouble is the Linekers of the world can only wring their hands at games in Southern and Eastern Europe where woke goes to die.

  25. Slight off subject, but as a lot of posts (quite rightly) state modern footballers a soft overpaid puffs, it reminds me of the ‘great’ Italian footballer Mario Balotelli whilst playing for Man City he had a car accident.

    The police were called and when they arrived they did their routine checks, and discovered £5,000.00 in cash in Balotellis car. Not unreasonably they asked him why he had some much money on him in cash….he replied ‘because I am rich’

    Now, that’s style.

  26. You might laugh at the header, but I’ve been to some football matches, clutching a warm pork’n’stuffing barm cake, lifted over the styles ( my kid, want a nut?), to have the goalie ask me for a light.

      • Did you never have a hot roast pork sandwich, Harold?

        Bread ( barm) cake dipped in the dripping.

        Stuffing spread on it like butter, and apple sauce.

        Then about half a pound of roast pork.

        You haven’t lived.

      • I’m not really a fan of pork JP not a religious thing but I’m not awfully keen on it.

        Cumberland or Lincolnshire Sausages and that’s about it.
        Occasionally something like Chorizo or some Honey and Mustard.

      • I guess that means I haven’t lived then😞

        Ah well I done other things. Some of which I will never put into print. Hehe.

      • Hog roasts, Harold?

        I’m not that keen on roast pork but Hog roast is slow-cooked and much nicer than the usual stuff.
        I avoid pork at carveries though; big lump of pork sitting under a lamp.

        No thanks.

  27. Hard men. FFS they kick a ball around a field.

    The blokes storming Gold beach or the marines battling for Iwo Jima. They were hard men, not fucking footballists, of any era let alone todays pussies.

  28. I’m in two minds about this. If England play the physical game, we’re booked. If England don’t go down easily, we have a disadvantage against the diving champions like Italy, Brazil, Spain, et al. We must do it. Having said that, it’s great watching players continue until they can’t go on any more. It’s not the physical game it was.

  29. Slightly off topic but related.

    Will the Premier League footballers take a knee for those children who were butchered today?

    The bastards.

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