Rob Bagchi has written an interesting article today about the apparent softness of today’s footballers when compared to the nutters of the past:
Alan Hansen does not look like the sort of man to suffer from nightmares. But even he, back in his elegant Liverpool pomp, could wake up with the 3am tremors the morning before facing one particular player. The funny thing is that it wasn’t proficient and resourceful forwards such as Frank Stapleton, Trevor Francis or Graeme Sharp who caused him sleepless nights but the journeyman striker Billy Whitehurst, a man with a forbidding countenance and a notoriety to match.
Widely regarded as one of the most brutal players of the ’80s and early ’90s, Whitehurst was named by no less than Neil Ruddock and Vinnie Jones as the hardest man they had ever played against. Indeed, legend has it that Whitehurst had even beaten up Jones whilst they were team mates at Sheffield United. After a disappointing downwardly mobile end to his career, Whitehurst joined Oxford where he was reported to have been supplementing his football earnings by competing in bare knuckle fights with local gypsies; that’s how hard he was. So, how do modern footballers compare?
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Any comparison is pointless, the modern game is totally different. If you get a red card every time you pummel someone, you either end up suspended all the time or you don’t get a contract to play for anyone. The era of the hard man has gone, but is it for the better? ‘The modern game has turned us into hypocrites,’ suggests Rob, ‘we profess to prefer silky skills but when our team is fannying about it doesn’t take long for even the aesthetes to yell “get stuck in” if not the more chilling “get some blood on your boots” that used to be a regular staple at grounds a couple of decades ago.’ Getting stuck in was at least as much a part of the game, a tactic if you like, and a team had to deal with it just as they would have to deal with a team playing an odd formation. What we have replaced the hard man with is even less savoury: the cheat. Bone-crushing tackles were performed with the knowledge that they would be punished. Diving and feigning injuries are performed with the aim of someone else being punished for having done nothing against the rules of the game. which is more ethical?
