Hardest Villa Player You Have Seen.

[Lobsterboy]

Was Bouma's head harder than Boateng's?

I seem to recall Gazza trying to give him a forearm smash in a midweek match when we played Boro and the fat piss can ended up breaking his arm!

[Zhong Yi]

Les Sealey, rest his soul, was apparently hard as nails.

on the pitch i would say Alan McInally or Martin Keown

[dave.woodhall]

Neale Cooper.

[pooligan]

Hey Dave,you must have a great memory. I remember Neale Cooper but i can't remember him playing more than a handful of games.

[Mister E]

Of course there was Bruce Rioch as well, who was a b*st*rd on the pitch.

[dave.woodhall]

Hey Dave,you must have a great memory. I remember Neale Cooper but i can't remember him playing more than a handful of games.

He hardly played but he was a mental case in all of them.

[pooligan]

Oh yes Neale Cooper was mental ok,i remember watching him in  a Central League match and him dropping the nut on some guy and somehow staying on the pitch.

[dave.woodhall]

Him and Stuart Pearce going into a 50/50. He wasn't the second to get up.

[Damo70]

Allan Evans for me but Andy Gray, Leighton Phillips, Ken McNaught, Peter Withe, Steve McMahon, Garry Thompson, Neale Cooper and Shaun Teale could all handle themselves. I still think the best thing I've ever seen on a football pitch was from Stuart Pearce though. Euro '92, Basile Boli, who was built like a heavyweight boxer dropped the nut on him. Pearce didn't flinch, wiped some blood off his cheek, looked at his hand with the blood on it and then looked at Boli in a dismissive way that said to me 'was that your best shot you pr**k?'

[russon]

Call me obsessed but I don't remember Sid pulling out of any tackles despite weighing barely nine stone in a soaking wet duffel coat

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

George Curtis gets my vote.
I could only find this picture of him in a Villa shirt, which happens to contain a few others who could look after themselves.
Charlie Aitken, Mick Wright, Lew Chatterley, Lochhhead, Godfrey. In between 30 yard rocket shots and pin point passes half the length of the pitch, Bruce Rioch would be dishing it out too.

 

[pooligan]

Love the photo ALITA, Good to see the likes of Bradley,Chatterley,Turnbull,Wright and Gibson again. Love the shirt to,its my favourite out of al the ones we have worn over the years.

[Damo70]

I've heard stories of George Curtis training on a gravel car park (not sure if it was Villa or Coventry he was with then) and thinking nothing of going into slide tackles and then just picking the bits of gravel out of his legs after training.

[Holte L2]

Townsend was hard. Wouldnt have fancied going into a 50/50 with him.

[Pat McMahon]

I remember a Scottish colleague telling me what a dirty bastard and good player Neale Cooper had been at Aberdeen so I was really disappointed in him during his time with us. To be fair to him he was playing .
under the disaster that was Only One King Billy, but I would have loved him to have severed more legs to help keep us up.

I agree with most of the above names, but pound for pound the most fearless player I can remember in a Villa shirt was Eamonn Deacy. 10 stone, will o the wisp, and he flew into tackles in the way that Cropley and Cowans used to. Like all truly hard players he could take it as well. One of my few happy memories of the Juventus game was of Eamonn splattering Claudio Gentile, who was the dirtiest player in the history of Italian football.