'Footy's Top Ten' Hardest Men - Part Three!

I shall now conclude the final chapter on the subject of 'Football’s Hardest Men' with the final three names that I would consider as the most suitably apt nominees to complete my 'Top Ten' inventory.

In Part One on the 25th November, I focused on Duncan Ferguson, Claudio Gentile, Billy Whitehurst & Dave Mackay.

In Part Two on the 28th November, the men in question were Frank Barson, Norman Hunter & Andoni Goikoetxea.

Now in Part Three, I am going to focus my attention on the following 'hardmen' who have graced our beautiful game.

Before football became a non-contact sport, players frequently spoke about the first 10 minutes of a game as a period in which you had to 'earn the right to play,' essentially by being hard!
In the same breath it was arguably even more important the other way round: you had to earn the right to be hard by showing you could play; otherwise you came across as a sort of cowardly fraud, presenting the facade of being hard.

Step forward Graeme Souness.
Did Souness 'pass that test? He gave the test!'

In his playing days at Liverpool, Sampdoria and Rangers, the Scottish international midfielder was known as one of the toughest competitors in the game.

Graeme Souness, was similar in many ways to say Johnny Giles. He could actually play the game, he didn't need to just kick people up in the air all afternoon. Everybody knows what a gifted technician Souness was on the field, but if you're like me what you might well remember him for was some of the most horrendous tackles he unleashed on his opponents - potentially career ending ones. Perhaps the worst I ever saw was when he was playing for Scotland against Iceland one time. The Icelandic player had the temerity to go for a fifty-fifty with Souness and collected most of the Scotland man's studs firmly in his groin.

One of Bob Paisley's majestic trio of Scottish captures, with Kenny Dalglish and Alan Hansen, he cost £352,000 from Middlesbrough in January 1978. Five months later he supplied the pass at Wembley for Dalglish to score the only goal to beat Bruges & retain the European Cup. In general during his Anfield career the Scotland captain responded brilliantly to Paisley's demand to curb his explosive temperament and he became a midfielder of immense stature.

In six successful seasons as a Liverpool player Graeme Souness was at the heart of Liverpool's triumphs. Memorably described as 'a bear of a player with the delicacy of a violinist,' he was a high-octane blend of amazing strength & bewitching subtlety (centre left).

But when the legs & to a lesser extent, the eyes went towards the end of his career, he had to rely on an inadvertently hilarious thuggery.

He moved to Italian football in 1984, but returned to the UK as player/manager of Glasgow Rangers.

In 1986 Souness marked his Rangers debut with a red card inside half an hour, for a two-footed outrage on Hibernian's George McCluskey, thus sparking a mass 22-man brawl. (Souness actually nobbled the wrong gangling mullet, an easy mistake to make in Edinburgh in the mid-80s).

Even as a football manager he seemed to court controversy wherever he went.
Most famously in 1996 he nearly caused a riot while boss of Galatasaray, by planting a Galatasaray club flag on the centre spot of the pitch, of fellow Turkish side & arch-rivals Fenerbahce.




In Ron Harris, the man they called 'Chopper' you had a guy who was considered the unacceptable face of a talented Chelsea team in the late 1960’s & early 1970’s.

In that footballing era, every side had a so-called destroyer, a hatchet man, whatever you want to call them. There was at the Arsenal, Peter Storey, at Liverpool Tommy Smith, at Man Utd you had Nobby Stiles......& so on.

Harris was said to have tried to intimidate opponents even in the tunnel before a match, with a choice sentence perhaps containing the word 'ambulance'
Harris denies this saying that in fact he seldom used to speak to anyone before or during a game. However he said his manager at Chelsea at the time, Tommy Docherty did give him a tip about man-marking.
'He told me to larrup somebody in the first few minutes, and after that just to stay behind them & cough every now and then, to show them I was not too far away.' The tactic plainly worked in the case of Tottenham’s Jimmy Greaves, marked by Chopper 19 times, scoring just the once.

It is Greaves, in fact, who wrote a foreword in a book saying, 'I've been acquainted with Ron Harris, better known as Chopper, for longer than I care to remember - and for most of that time I thought he was an evil git.' Harris came into his own in the 1970 FA Cup Final & subsequent replay against Leeds – two of the most bruising games ever seen!

His assault on Eddie Gray in the replay was one of the reasons the Blues won the trophy. Today there would not have been a player left on the pitch come the end of that Final. Nowadays it seems that too many teams have a soft centre where their midfield should be.

The game is much faster these days, of course, and the timing of a tackle is becoming a thing of precision. Old Chopper Harris, who was so short-sighted he had to be pulled back from scything down his own team-mates, would be permanently suspended these days.

Dissent is a major cause of cautions. And it seems that more modern players have difficulty in controlling themselves after being fouled. In the old days a player was willing to bide his time before getting even!




Last but by no means least, the final player to make my 'Top Ten' list of football’s hardest men is Forest legend Stuart Pearce.


Pearce was signed by Brian Clough in 1985 from Coventry City & he became a stalwart of the Nottingham Forest side of the 1980s & 90s. Pearce forged a reputation as one of the most uncompromising defenders in world football.



Given the nickname 'Psycho' by Nottingham Forest fans, the left-back cultivated a 'hard but fair' image that had him respected up & down the country.

There can be no doubt that Pearce was a hard man. He did possess an uncompromising tackle, but there was more to his game than that. He was a great crosser of the ball & had a fearsome shot on him whether it be from open play or a dead-ball situation. Probably his most notable goal was the bullet free-kick he scored in the 1991 FA Cup Final at Wembley.

Pearce was physically tough. He once tried to run off a broken leg in the twilight of his career at West Ham. But it was his mental strength to take a penalty for England in a shoot-out against Spain at the 1996 Euro Championships, which will live longest in the memory of all England fans, as he exorcised the ghost of 1990!

Pearce had missed a vital penalty-kick in the World Cup semi-final against West Germany in 1990, but made no mistake against Spain & the joy and relief on his face along with his clenched fist salute to the crowd when he scored, wiped out the memory of that miss & is one of English football's most enduring images (right).

Pearce later said in his autobiography of his penalty miss in Turin in 1990. 'My world collapsed, I had been taking penalties for as long as I could remember, but now I'd missed the most important penalty of my life.'

The 1992 Euro Championships saw him come up against a certain Frenchman Basil Boli. The giant Frenchman headbutted Pearce, without the referee noticing. Pearce was visibly angry and had to wipe blood from his face. Normally you would have given Boli five minutes at the most before 'Psycho' sent him to the treatment room. But the England captain surprised us all when he just got up and continued with the game.
You wouldn't have blamed Pearce for flooring the Frenchman, such was the ferocity of the headbutt, but Pearce showed he was better than that and beat his man by 'playing football.'

He won countless trophies with Forest and scored some classic goals. He made 522 appearances, & scored 88 goals for The Reds.
Whilst for England he made 78 appearances & scored 5 goals. Not bad for a left back!


*Putting together a list of foootball's top ten hardest men was no easy feat, & I am well aware that I had to leave out many other well-known players, who some of you might consider more worthy contenders than the players I did eventually choose.
So before I sign off I will add an additional list of some of the other players I considered but overlooked before I decided on my final ten - Nobby Stiles, Joe Jordan, Marco Tardelli, Kenny Burns, Tommy Smith, Terry Butcher, Luis Medina, Peter Storey, Antonio Rattin, Roy Keane, Jose Batista, Billy Bremner, Vinnie Jones, Miguel Angel Nadal........to name but a few!

'Footy's Top Ten' Hardest Men - Part Two!

Part One of my guide to 'Footy's Top Ten Hardest Men' featured Duncan Ferguson, Claudio Gentile, Billy Whitehurst & Dave Mackay.

Now in Part Two, I shall nominate three more candidates who in my opinion are suitably worthy of inclusion in this inventory.

Next up, Frank Barson (Barnsley, Aston Villa, Manchester United and Watford). Famed for his brutality even in the 1920's, when footballers were less squeamish about physical contact than they are today, Barson was perhaps the first great hard man & was probably the most controversial footballer of his day.

An imperious specimen of masculinity notorious for his own inventive take on the physical side of football, he certainly looked the part: Barrel-chested, thighs like tree trunks, fists permanently half-clenched, a broken, twisted nose and his hair tightly greased back.

Barson could play though - he once scored a header from 30 yards for Manchester United against his former club Aston Villa, but inevitably he was remembered for an unprecedented degree of disciplinary trouble.

Once banned for seven months for a sickening challenge in a match against Fulham, Barson was frequently escorted out of grounds by the police to protect him from mobs of angry opposition fans.
After one especially zesty display for Barnsley, he had to be smuggled out of Goodison Park to avoid a group of home fans who wanted to discuss with him his on-field behaviour!

Some stories suggest he brought a gun into the manager's office to accelerate discussions over a pay rise, & he unashamedly spoke of his friendship with the Fowler brothers, who were later hanged for murder.

He marked his last professional appearance at the age of 39, by being sent-off against Accrington Stanley on Boxing Day 1930.

Barson won his first and only international cap for for England against Wales. England lost 2-1 and Barson was never recalled to the side. His reputation for dirty play probably was an important factor in this decision.

Barson died in September 1968 aged 77.


In Norman Hunter, (Leeds, Bristol City & Barnsley) the Leeds United side of the early 1970's probably possessed the dirtiest player of that era.

No mean feat in one of the most cynical sides in English football history, that also contained the likes of Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles, Jack Charlton & Allan Clarke.

Initially an inside forward, Hunter was moulded by Leeds into a central defender who made the No.6 shirt his own in 14 years with the club he joined at the age of 15.

His fellow professionals made him their Player of the Year in 1974 - the award's inaugural presentation.

It was against Derby, at the old Baseball Ground in the 1975-76 season, that Hunter secured his place in football's annals of infamy, with an epic punch-up with Francis Lee that resulted in both players being sent off.
Lee infuriated Hunter by winning a penalty via his well honed trick of taking a dive. When Hunter put a right hook on Lee he couldn't have been prepared for the City man's response, a whirring, blurring, wind milling assault that floored Hunter.

In 1973 Leeds lost to AC Milan in the now defunct European Cup Winners Cup. This match is one of a series of matches involving Italian Clubs that are regarded as being 'fixed', by Dezso Solti, a Hungarian refugee, who, according to the testimony of a number of officials, was responsible for bribing referees. Hunter was sent-off in this match for retaliation.

In his years of playing, Hunter acquired a reputation as a dirty player, apparently happy to use methods not within the laws of the game to curtail the effect of opposition strikers. As such, he was often referred to by supporters, journalists and sports commentators as Norman 'Bites Yer Legs' Hunter, a nickname which stuck with him throughout the duration of his career.

Leeds' trainer Les Cocker was once told by Hunter that he had gone home with a broken leg. 'Whose leg is it?' Les asked him.


Andoni Goikoetxea (Athletic Madrid & Athletic Bilbao). 'The Butcher of Bilbao' was plainly at least one prawn short of a paella, and delighted in reducing star names to flotsam & jetsam.

Opposing forwards lived in fear of receiving the ball with their back to goal.

Pride of place in the living room of El Sod (right) is a glass case, containing one football boot. The boot he had used to break Diego Maradona's left ankle & destroy his ankle ligaments with in 1983.
That 'psycho tackle' put the Argentine star out of football for a substantial length of time. 'Crack! It was like the chop of an axe from behind,' Maradona recalled. 'My leg went numb, I knew everything was ruined.'

Goikoetxea was given a 16-match ban for the incident.
When Maradona recovered he sparked a fight between the teams in retribution.

Following his ban, Goikoetxea then crocked another Barcelona ace, the German Bernd Schuster, leaving him with a nasty knee injury.

Goikoetxea played 39 times for Spain, making his debut against Holland in February 1983. He represented Spain at both the 1984 European Football Championships & the 1986 FIFA World Cup.


Part Three of 'Footy's Top Ten Hardest Men' will follow soon.

'Footy's Top Ten' Hardest Men - Part One!

In these days of namby-pamby, overpaid professionals it's sometimes good to take a look back at when men were men on the football pitch!
Those were the days when every team had its hard man.

It is fair to say that the modern game has taken away the stereotypical hard men, largely down to the camera scrutiny the players now experience on a pitch. You no longer witness, the subtle kicks, pinches or whacks that was part and parcel of the game then. These were the make-up of the real hard men who went about their business quietly and effectively.

My recollections are conjured up using a combination of books & news articles I have read over the years, archived television footage, as well of course as witnessing some of the players in question at first hand, with my very own eyes as a paying spectator.


My first introduction to a genuine tough man was Billy Whitehurst (Sheffield Utd, Hull City, Newcatle & Oxford Utd), a strong man with both a big physique and a reputation to match. I remember in one match Billy kicking out the front teeth of the then Coventry City skipper, Brian Kilcline, a big tough opponent in his own right.

Nobody would deny that he was seriously hard. He once apparently offered out the entire Crystal Palace side in the players' lounge at Hull. When he was at Oxford, he was rumoured to be supplementing his weekly pay, and winding down by means of bare-knuckle fighting with the local gypsies. Neil Ruddock said that, when Billy whispered sweet promises in his ear mid-match, 'I used to start shaking.'

Vinnie Jones, a colleague at Sheffield United, recalls in his autobiography how Billy (right) nipped an escalating rumble with a phalanx of Sheffield Wednesday fans in the bud by knocking out stone cold the opposition ringleader with 'one of the best right-handers I have ever seen - inside or outside a ring'. During that spell at Sheffield United, he was sent out to roam the green with the explicit instructions from his manager, Dave Bassett: 'Go and cause some bollocks, Billy.' He so rarely disappointed.

Italian's have always had a reputation for being 'hot-headed' & 'synical' & in Claudio Gentile (Juventus, Fiorentina & Piacenza) you had the ultimate symbol of Italian cynicism. There was nothing remotely 'gentile' about Claudio!
He was one of the Italian defenders to make up an infamous 'defensive trio' alongside Bergomi & Tardelli in Spain in 1982, where together they led Italy to World Cup glory.

Gentile came to international acclaim in the 2nd phase match against the title-holders Argentina, when he man-marked Diego Maradona out of the game by kicking & flooring him constantly throughout the game. In response to his performance against Maradona, Gentile famously quipped, 'Football is not for ballerinas!'

One of Gentile's most favored tactics was to stand behind the striker who had the ball while kicking between his opponent's legs to play the ball, leaving the opposing player's legs beaten and bruised - a tactic adopted by top-flight defenders ever since. Gentile was also a master of the hard tackle to get the ball, not the player, and was rewarded for his skill by a career that lacked even a single sending-off.

In Dave Mackay you had the hardest footballer in an era when the game really could be termed a man's game. Mackay came back from a twice-broken left leg to dominate in midfield for Tottenham during the 60's before a late and glorious swansong at Derby.

Mackay could show anger, but never, pain. Not because, he thought it showed weakness to the opposition, but because the part of his brain that registered pain or fear had apparently stopped working. After he suffered a grotesque leg-break at Old Trafford in 1963, which would keep him out for almost two years, he barely grimaced, and as he was stretchered off he sat up leaning on his elbow, looking almost bored. Truly, types come no stronger, or silent.

Mackay was definitely one of the good guys: a genuinely outstanding left-half and a truly honorable man, who used his clout to put the hurt on opponents but never ever to seriously injure them.
Nonetheless he was intimidating enough to send the opposition, psychologically, for an early bath.

Engaging with him aggressively was not to be advised.
Billy Bremner discovered this when he kicked Mackay's bad leg. The picture of Mackay, teeth gritted so hard that it seems like they're about to splinter everywhere, grabbing a terrified Bremner by the shirt is one of football's most iconic hard-man photos (right).

Dave Mackay was the indestructible hero.

Where to start with Duncan Ferguson,(Dundee Utd, Rangers, Everton - twice & Newcastle). His career was often punctuated by controversy both on and off the pitch, and by injury. The ex-con has been branded everything from hard man to hooligan, but to Everton fans, he was a hero.

'Big Dunc' was brandished the yellow card a total of 37 times in his 269 Premier League games & shares the dubious record for the most Premier League red cards, collecting a whopping eight along with Patrick Vieira. He was once sent off for punching Paul Scharner in the stomach and a subsequent fracas with Pascal Chimbonda resulted in a total match ban of seven games.

He was capped for Scotland seven times, but made himself unavailable for selection by his national team due to a dispute with the Scottish Football Association.
He has scored the most goals of any Scottish player in the FA Premier League.

Ferguson also frequently found himself in trouble with the law, leading to four convictions for assault, two arising from taxi–rank scuffles. However, his most memorable on–field confrontation was with Raith Rovers defender John McStay in 1994 while playing for Rangers. Ferguson headbutted his opponent and this led to a three-month spell in prison.