Well I'm going for our manager himself Big Sam. In his one season with us as a player he scared the **** out of many a Centre forward in his day. I also vaguely remember an incident when he played for us against Norwich where I believe there was handbags and he went and threw a Norwich player around like a rag doll.
what about Tony Towers from early seventies? Played in midfield, about 120 games and about 20 goals, was always up for fighting or retaliating, loved watching him and prob one of my favourite players, along with Bally and Rae for going thru a player.....if i can remember?
Billy Whitehurst was the hardest b@st@rd whoever kicked a ball (or a player). I don't think there was a team he didn't play for was there? Word had it that he was short of money so took on two bare-knuckle fights (the night before a game) and then told his Manager he'd been in a car crash and still played! I never saw him play to be fair but another who I did see play was a hard man who had class and that was Charlie Hurley. As Billy only had about a dozen and a half games for Sunderland I would have to say Charlie.
A mate of mine was at school with Jeff Clarke in a working class Yorkshire town, Knottingley, in the 1960s. Apparently Jeff was the very last kid in the school who had to go without shoes as his parents couldn't afford them. When some other kids tried taking the piss, Jeff very quickly gained the reputation as the hardest kid in that working class town. On the football field he was a fantastic player, never went looking for trouble, but certainly never backed down if it was offered.
Roy Keane was loved and adored by United fans for having fire in him, and aggression, but I'd never mistake that for him being a brutal fighter.
No, he was a hard player, as far as players go, he was tough and aggressive, but as a human being in the grand scheme of things, nah, not even close.
You're just throwing that about for the sake of it now. Tel hasn't even mentioned anything about martial arts...
Define 'hard'... if you mean tough, then I'll definitely accept Roy Keane as one. If you mean it in it's traditional sense, he's a joke. I'd rather fight Roy Keane with one hand tied behind my back, that fight Audley Harrison with one hand tied behind his back, all day long, and that guy's a ****ing joke of a boxer.
Well in a footballing context it clearly means the take no prisoners hatchet man style player. I don't understand why non-football fighters are being used as a benchmark for a thread about footballers. If you (not you personally Terry) want to make this thread about players who were only skilled at hand to hand combat then there will have to be a lot of history rewritten to strike off many players viewed as 'hard' over the years that football has existed.
Technically you're wrong as well, it's about Sunderland's hardest ever player, and you're chatting about Roy Keane. In essence your hardest ever player, could be somebody who was an absolute tuss, just by default.
What made him 'hard'? Did he like a crunching tackle or are there stories to go with his name? Genuine question.
Yeah he was a no nonsense in the tackle player, couldn't get away with how he played these days. Tees did have this for an off the pitch story though: "Cant believe i forgot about Alex Rae. Apparantly he was getting heckled off a load of Newcastle fans on a train once. As soon as it stopped he got off and offered to fight them all. Not one of the soft b@stards dared to get off!" So I guess he was a fighter too.
