Biting Tackle!

There’s been many hard tacklers among local footballers over the years, in fact in the ‘old days’, it was more or less expected. Not only was it expected, but the ball players and the ‘choppers’ as the hard men were called, had a grudging respect for each other. With the advent of more money and a foolish belief that everybody had a ‘god given right’ to win, tacklers became even more influential in the game. The powers that be decided a few years ago to ban tackling from behind, but as in all things it’s dependent on the referee’s judgement and if he deems no contact to be made during the manoeuvre, chances are the tackler will get away with it. We have had our fair share of ‘hard men’ here in Norn Iron, Roy McCreadie when playing for Portadown, Glenn Dunlop, the famous ‘hatchet man’ at Crusaders and Packy McAllister at Coleraine. There were many others, too numerous to mention, but it wasn’t only defenders and midfielders who ‘dished’ it out. Strikers were usually able to give as good as they got, in fact they had to if they wanted to survive and not be intimidated by their opposite numbers. Jimmy McGhee, a legend at the Showgrounds, an old style centre-forward and member of United’s cup winning team of ’58, was not averse to dishing out a bit of punishment to opponents by all accounts. One of his favourite ploys was to gently nip opponents, not a serious thing, but hurting just the same and it usually had the desired effect of unsettling them. He allegedly did his best to rile them with his tongue also, calling Linfield defenders ‘orange baskets’ and Derry City defenders Fenian ones and I’m sure this type of gamesmanship is still prevalent in the Irish league. Across the pond there were many ‘hard men’ over the years, ‘chopper Harris’, at Chelsea, Nobby Stiles at Manchester United, Tommy ‘I’ll break your leg’ Smith at Liverpool and Norman ‘bite yer legs’ Hunter at Leeds United. These are only a few, a very few, ones from the more modern era were Vinny Jones at Wimbledon, Dennis Wise at Chelsea and Roy Keane at Manchester United. As I said earlier strikers were not averse to giving as good as they got, Sky summariser Andy Gray was well able to look after himself on the football field and one of more modern times, Alan Shearer. But then we have this latest incident last weekend, when Tottenham’s Jermain Defoe, bit his opponent on the arm. What a childish act, I still can’t take it in, it’s like something you’d see at Nursery school or at a dog kennel. The real ‘hard men’ must be laughing there socks off, as its just too silly for words. I suppose the next thing will be a ‘handbag’ fight in the player’s tunnel, god spare us from the ridicule!