Ruddock: A Dying Breed in Modern Football?

Neil Ruddock now writes exclusively for FootballFancast.com. Read his column below. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.

Football has a terrible habit of pigeonholing certain players into categories. Some are warranted, some are certainly not; however it is very hard to break away from it when commentators, pundits and supporters have labelled you as a certain type of player.

The term ‘hard man’ use to be widely used within football. I have been tarred with that very brush myself, and although I would prefer the term ‘committed’ the very fact I would throw myself into tackles for the sake of my team deems me that then there is little I can do my part to change their view. You ask a footballer who the genuine hard men in football are and you wouldn’t hear the usual host of clichéd names of Jones and Fash, but players like Mark Hughes, Eric Cantona, Cyrille Regis, or for me the hardest of them all Jimmy Case who I was fortunate to play alongside at Southampton. Everyone was scared of Jimmy, who not only was as hard as nails, but as his success showed at Liverpool he could also play a bit as well. Unfortunately it appears the committed, wholehearted footballers are becoming something of a dying breed as the authorities do their level best to change the very fabric of the game.

It has become frustrating to watch the game I love changing. Every challenge brings with it players riving in pain in order to get their opponent booked; players get sent off for leading with their elbow when challenging for headers, (how do you jump with both arms by your side?) leaving the game resembling something of a non contact sport that is devoid of commitment. It is shameful in fact and I remember a time when you would be embarrassed to show an opponent you had been hurt and would have been determined to win your own personal battle on the pitch come the end of the game.

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The so called experts who see these initiatives as the way of cleaning up the game of the bad injuries we have witnessed in the past two years will do well to look back at the ‘50s, ‘60s ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and assess how many compound fractures, dislocations, leg breaks, broken feet and twisted ligaments occurred to footballers then as opposed to now. I ask the question as to whether it has more to do with the fact the modern pitch has very little give in it like it used to, or whether the actual modern boots worn by footballers are responsible for some of the horrific injuries we have seen in recent years? I am not suggesting for a minute that there aren’t some players who are reckless in the tackle, but unfortunately the art of tackling is being trained out of them, in light of the changing ways of football that is fast becoming something that resembles little more than a non contact sport.

I am sure there are many of you out there that may agree there is a need to clean the game up and welcome the initiatives to do it. For me the game has become incredibly frustrating to watch as a spectacle with the way players fall over at will and clearly have no personal pride or professionalism about them. You wouldn’t have had the likes of Cantona, Hughes or Regis falling over at the slightest nudge in the back or a shoulder charge, as they were made of a lot sterner stuff than the modern footballer within the Premier League. Maybe it is just the current climate of harsh officiating that has turned them soft, but there is certainly no place for the so called ‘hard man’ in the modern game.

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