The Biggest Prick To Play For The Baggies ?

[jembob]

Ally Brown - I can still hear it now. Bastard.

[Grande Pablo]

As I've said on this esteemed portal on a couple of threads like this before, I found Ally Robertson the most odious, rude billy big bollocks I've ever had the displeasure to meet - this was in a non-football setting in the days when journeymen pros blended into the background.  Except him.

[ROBBO]

Ronnie Allen for no other reason than if my memory serves me right his late goal sent us down one season.

[willywombat]

Ally Brown - Unforgiveable

[KevinGage]

They all just blend in to one vast nothingness to me.

Crap players, crap fans, crap club.

What's that tear jerker they sing about all going down together? Sums them up really, celebrating failure. 

[WikiVilla]

The animal that snapped Cropley's leg thus ending his career - Ally Robertson wasn't it. Dirty Bastard

[ADVILLAFAN]

People will say that I shouldn't mention it because he's ill, but Geoff Horsfield was a prick.

Also Robinson, who's at Bolton now.

Don't remember Ali Brown, but I know about his 'tackle' on Cropley.

[OzVilla]

It was Ally Brown, hence the animosity.

As Hopkins played for them it's probably him although he's more associated with SHA.

As a Boggie through and through i'd go for Lee Hughes - disgusting actions of a complete bellend.

[Lambert and Payne]

Wasn't around in the Ali Brown days so cant comment
Geoff Horsfield was a prick and he played for that shit down the road
Lee Hughes though, a fucking complete and utter wanker, should still be locked up, winds up every single football fan and almost started a riot when he went to Wolves, he goes into a list of players who i will always always hate

[*shellac*]

So many but Lee Hughes would win it hands down.

[darren woolley]

Can we vote everyone who has ever played for the Baggies in that case I will say whoever has donned the stripes is the Prick.

Cyrille Regis and Ken McNaught are just two Villa players you have called a prick off the top of my head. There are probably more that escape me at the moment. (I will give you Luke Moore though for wasting his talent even after seeing what happened to his older brother).

I must clarify my comment I don't mean ex Villa players.

[Legion]

1. Lee Hughes
2. Ally Brown
3. Robert Hopkins

[martin@ardenley]

Ally Brown closely followed by Lee Hughes

For those who don't know, here is an account of the tackle by Tim Adams (Observer)

One of my indelible sporting memories is not a sight but a sound. I'm watching Aston Villa play West Bromwich Albion one grey day in 1977. The derby is always intense, but today there seems a kind of malevolence to the match, and to the crowd; you would n ot want to be out there. In the Villa midfield is a slight fi gure called Alex Cropley, a Scot who is in the form of his life. The previous season he had inspired Villa to a 5-1 win over Liverpool, the champions , and this afternoon he is making the Albion side - the team of John Wile and Len Cantello, one of the most uncompromising ever to take to a football field - look like park players.

There is nothing of Cropley, he is in that mould of footballer that is quick and wiry, playing in spaces, seeing gaps, but he is fearless, too, never stepping back from a challenge. The Villa fans have a favourite song, through which, in the company of my dad, I tend to mumble, though I appreciate the sentiment: ' Five-foot eight, not much weight, Alex Cropley's fucking great, la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.'

In my memory, I'm half-humming this and straining to see the pitch when a ball falls from the sky exactly between Cropley and an Albion player named Ally Brown , both running at full pace from opposite directions about 10 yards apart; an instant later Cropley meets the ball and Brown meets Cropley with all the force at his will, a force that seems to have built up steadily with each challenge in the match , and is looking for a way to escape. It is then I hear the sound, an other-worldly noise, easily loud enough to silence 35,000 people in a state of high excitement, like the gunshot that starts a race. This is not a start, though; it's an ending of sorts. It is the sound of Alex Cropley's breaking leg, a sharp crack that snaps tibia and fibula and leaves the lower portion of his shin skewed at a vicious angle to the upper part.

I can still hear it now, that crack that seemed to echo in an absolute chill quiet . I don't remember any of the goals of that game, or of that season, but I'll never forget that sound; it was the first moment in my life as a spectator, I suppose, when sport suddenly seemed like mortality. Major injuries always announce themselves immediately; teammates know the worst has happened, so do fans, so does the player. The suspension of disbelief that surrounds the match is punctured, the injury allows a different, messier register of understanding back into a stadium. What has seemed play, suddenly is real; where all before was speed and recklessness, now all is care and slowness.

Cropley, who was 26 , played a few times more, but not with any of his previous grace and pace; what had once looked wiry about him and his legs now looked as if it would easily snap. The more heartless Albion fans developed a chant about the incident : 'Alex, Alex Crippley.' Cropley drifted out of the game; he had played for Scotland twice ; he now drives taxis in Edinburgh.

[JUAN PABLO]

1. Lee Hughes
2. Ally Brown
3. Robert Hopkins

about right

[gervilla]

Well done to Robert Hopkins as he was very near the top of the " Biggest Prick to play for SHA" thread a few years back ( Only beaten by Paul Tait  IIRC )