‘IT WOULD BE SO SPECIAL TO TAKE LUTON UP FOR OUR FANS’
MICK Harford turned 60 this week. “Sixty!” exclaims the Luton Town manager, the incredulity genuine. “Bloody hell. Nearly a pensioner. All I need is my bus pass now.” Those who saw Harford play in his 80s heyday will find the idea of him shuffling onto the No.42 every bit as ludicrous. No list of football hardmen is complete without the towering striker, whose reputation was such that he was the only player never initiated by Wimbledon’s famous Crazy Gang. Forget the centre-halves he battered on a weekly basis. Even Fash and Vinny trembled when Big Mick laced up a pair of boots. One famous story recounts how he single-handedly laid out a dozen builders in a Birmingham pub after they’d picked a fight with goalkeeper Tony Coton.
In Under the Moon, a short-lived sports show from the late 90s, expros named Harford so frequently in a ‘hardest player’ segment that the question was changed to ‘Who is the hardest player you have played with or against - bar Mick Harford?’
Today, even with a bionic knee and a set of false teeth, Harford has lost none of his power to intimidate. Yet the man himself scoffs at his own legend.
Physical
“Football was a lot more physical in those days,” says Harford, who was working as a plumber in his native Sunderland when Graham Taylor signed him for Lincoln City in 1977. “But I wouldn’t call myself a hard man. Brave, yes. I’d put my head into places that other people wouldn’t go. “But a hard man? Na. Tommy Smith, Graeme Souness - they were hardmen. And fantastic players, by the way. “So were the Vinnys of
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We just didn’t want to upset the rhythm