Hard men of football

[Big Swifty]

It was pointed out to me, when I lived in Stoke, that Johnny Giles was one of the worst, as he used to rake his studs down opponents' Achilles.

I’d always remembered him as one of the "cleaner" members of that dirty Leeds outfit.

In mitigation, I was only 7/8 at the time.

Your Stoke informant was correct. Giles was perhaps the worst of the lot, as while Bremner and Hunter were unsubtle, Giles would commit nasty, dangerous fouls on players' legs when the ref wasn't looking. A pity, as he was an excellent footballer.
The worst was apparently Peter Sorey of Arsenal, who had a psychopathic side to his game and had no compunction about doing serious damage to an opponent. It seems he went out to commit dreadful fouls, when refs were perhaps more tolerant.
I wonder how many older ones on here recall Jimmy Scoular, of Portsmouth and Newcastle. He had thighs like tree-trunks and anyone he tackled stayed tackled. He was a fearsome Scot of the old school.
Some of these guys wouldn't last five minutes now without being red-carded.

 

[Tom Ford]

Not so much hard but dirty was Scholes.. always found it funny that Keane always got the headlines but this feller was just as dirty but was given a fee pass.. how many times did this dirty so and so blatantly cripple somebody only for the commentator to reply “ typical forwards challenge from Paul Scholes “ feller knew exactly what he was doing..