THE!FLYING!PIG
Top player nicknames
ASIZE really matters in some sports. For example, it helps to be tall if you’re a basketball player. Yet in football, you don’t have to be from the land of the giants to be a success. Indeed, some ‘shorter’ players have become stars of the beautiful game.
You only have to look at the awesome Lionel Messi who is a mere 5ft 7ins tall, but is without doubt one of the all-time greats.
THE ultimate accolade for any top footballer is to have his own instantly recognisable nickname.
Some nicknames tend to be a bit boring and predictable. You take the first four or five letters of a surname or indeed the whole surname and add an ‘s’ or an ‘o’ or a ‘y’ or an ‘ie’ and Lampard became ‘Lamps’, Beckham became ‘Becks’, Peter Shilton ‘Shilts’, Bryan Robson ‘Robbo’, Bobby Moore ‘Mooro’, Alan Ball ‘Bally’, George Best ‘Bestie’ and, of course, current Wales manager Ryan Giggs was ‘Giggsy’. You get the idea?
Readers over a certain age will remember the long-running ‘Saint and Greavsie’ TV show co-hosted by the two famous top class ex-players – Ian St John of Liverpool and Jimmy Greaves of Spurs. Others are a bit more imaginative. Goalkeepers have enjoyed some of the more extravagant ones: Liverpool’s chunky goalkeeper from the 1960s Tommy Lawrence was ‘The Flying Pig’.
John ‘Tubby’ Ogston of Aberdeen fame actually became Lawrence’s understudy and played one game for the Anfield club in April 1967.
The accident prone Gary Sprake of Leeds United from that same era was known as ‘Careless Hands’. Rangers’ 6ft 4ins Peter McCloy, who hailed from the west coast of Scotland, was called ‘The Girvan Lighthouse’.
Two at least, Bert Williams of Wolves and England and the equally agile Peter Bonetti of Chelsea and England, were dubbed ‘The Cat’ and then, of course, there was that man of many clubs David ‘Calamity’ James.
Obese goalkeeper William Foulke, whose career straddled the Victorian and Edwardian eras, was famously known as ‘Fatty’. Another man-mountain was Scottish referee Tom ‘Tiny’ Wharton.
Moving onto uncompromising defenders we had Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris of Chelsea; Jock ‘Tiger’ Shaw of Rangers; Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock of Southampton, Liverpool and West Ham amongst others.
Leeds and England’s Norman ‘Bites Yer Legs’ Hunter, Everton’s David ‘Rhino’ Unsworth and Julian ‘The Terminator’ Dicks of West Ham.
Hard men that they were, they all sound a bit like choirboys next to Andoni Goikoetxea of Atletico Bilbao, who had the fearsome soubriquet of ‘The Butcher of Bilbao’.
Facial characteristics also conjure up nicknames. Prominent noses led to Sky TV’s whispering pundit Phil Thompson being called ‘Pinocchio’ during his Liverpool days and Coventry’s John Sillett becoming ‘ Snozz’ whilst John Lunn of Dunfermline just had to be called ‘Lugs’ because of his very distinctive wing-nut ears, a la Lineker, and of course there was the one and only Jimmy ‘The Chin’ Hill.
All-action Emlyn Hughes of Liverpool and England was ‘Crazy Horse’ and the equally energetic Stuart Pearce of Nottingham Forest and England fame revelled in the somewhat unflattering nickname of ‘Psycho’.
Colin Bell of Manchester City, reknowed for his seemingly limitless stamina, became ‘Nijinsky’ after the great racehorse of his era whilst West Brom’s goalscoring midfield ace Tony Brown, who also had a great engine, was known as ‘Bomber’. The hugely under-rated Billy Bonds of West Ham was known simply as ‘Bonzo’.
The tall, rather ungainly but hugely effective Jackie Charlton (Leeds United) was ‘The Giraffe’ whilst his fellow World Cup winner Roger Hunt of Liverpool was tagged ‘Sir Roger’ by the Kop.
Arsenal’s multi-trophy winning centre-half from the 1930s Herbie Roberts was known as ‘The Policeman’ and the famous Rangers and Scotland captain George Young was ‘Corky’.
Tommy Baldwin of Chelsea, who won both the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup whilst at Stamford Bridge, was called ‘The Sponge’ for his ability to out-drink his other fun loving teammates who included Peter ‘The Wizard of Os’ Osgood, Ian ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson and John ‘Boylers’ Boyle. According to the press, Charlie Nicholas seemed to spend most of his time at Arsenal hanging out in Stringfellows with Page 3 stunners so in view of his hedonistic lifestyle he was tagged, rather predictably, ‘Champagne Charlie’.
Paul Ince’s own choice of nickname ‘The Guvnor’ led to the real guvnor at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, questioning the player’s maturity and coming to the fairly obvious conclusion that ‘Incey’ was getting far too big for his boots.
Something had to give, inevitably it was ‘Arrivederci’ Incey. Another United player who had previously made the trip to Italy was Ray ‘The Crab’ Wilkins, who was known as ‘Butch’ in his Chelsea days.
As ever, strikers have grabbed all the glory, even in the sobriquet department. The best of the lot has got to be ‘The Golden Vision’, the name given to Everton’s highly skilled blond Scottish international from the 1960s - Alex Young. It also inspired a television play of the same name. Nat Lofthouse of Bolton and England would forever be known as ‘The Lion of Vienna’ after his heroic match-winning performance against Austria in the Prater Stadium in 1952. Duncan Ferguson of Everton and briefly of Rangers was dubbed ‘Duncan Disorderly’ after doing jail time for a violent on-field assault. Two unsuspecting burglars also found to their cost that you don’t pop into his house uninvited! Hibs star of the 1950s Lawrie Reilly was known as ‘Last Minute’ for his ability to grab late goals. His contemporary Charlie Fleming of Sunderland had two nicknames – ‘Legs’ and ‘Cannonball’ and the outspoken Derek Dougan of
Wolves and Northern Ireland fame was known throughout the game as ‘The Doog’.
Neilly Dewar, a 1930s star of Third Lanark, Manchester United and Scotland, was known as ‘Silversleeves’ for his habit of wiping his nose on his jersey.
Another star from that same era Matthias Sindelar, star striker of the legendary Austria wunderteam, was called ‘The Paper Man’. Had the two played together that may have solved Dewar’s problem!
Goalhanger Allan Clarke of Leeds United was ‘Sniffer’ and Man United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was the ‘Baby-faced Assassin’. West Ham currently have Mexican striker Javier ‘Chicarito’ Hernandez, which means ‘Little Pea’, and Manchester City had Shaun ‘The Goat’ Goater. His exploits led to the home crowd chanting ‘Feed the Goat and he will score’.
The rotund Micky Quinn of Newcastle and Coventry fame had a number of nicknames with ‘Sumo’ being one of the more flattering.
Ally ‘Coisty’ McCoist spent so much time on the bench when Graeme Souness was manager of Rangers that he was nicknamed ‘The Judge’.
Wingers with memorable nicknames were that box-of-tricks Jimmy ‘Jinky’ Johnstone of Celtic fame, a nickname he shared with the mercurial Jimmy Smith (Aberdeen and Newcastle); David ‘Rocky’ Rocastle of Arsenal; Derby County’s Alan Hinton was ‘Gladys’ and Clive Clarke of West Brom was ‘Chippy’. Jimmy Delaney of Celtic and Manchester United fame, who suffered badly broken arms on two occasions, was called rather unkindly ‘Brittlebones’.
The frequently injured Darren Anderton of Portsmouth and Tottenham Hotspur fame was known as ‘Sicknote’ after a character from a television programme, London’s Burning.
The late, great John White of Spurs was ‘The Ghost’. Big John Hughes of Celtic was called ‘Yogi Bear’. This led to some enterprising businessman producing the very first football inflatable - Yogi in a hooped jersey - to cash in on the celebrity of both.
A Scotsman of many clubs, Peter McKennan, was called ‘Ma Ba’ as that was his particular on-field battlecry. George Graham of Arsenal was ‘Stroller’ and yet another Gunner, Ray Parlour, was ‘The Romford Pele’ whilst Manchester United’s Brian MacClair, formerly of Motherwell and Celtic, got lumbered with ‘Choccy’. Man City’s current fans’ favourite David Silva is well suited to his ‘Merlin’ tag.
In the 1970s, Liverpool had two university-educated men in their side – Brian Hall and Steve Heighway. As ever, the Kop were on top of their form with their nicknames for the two of “Little Bamber and Big Bamber” after the popular University Challenge question master.
Foreign player nicknames proved a bit more poetic than ours. They had ‘The Black Pearl’ (Didi and Pele which are in themselves nicknames); ‘The White Arrow’ (Di Stefano); ‘The Little Bird’ (Garrincha); ‘The White Feather’ (Ravanelli); ‘The Black Panther’ (Eusebio) and the undoubted daddy of them all Roberto ‘The Divine Pony-tail’ Baggio.
The great Ferenc Puskas, who had a spell in the Hungarian army, was ‘The Galloping Major’, the imperious Franz Beckenbauer was ‘Kaiser’, Emilio Butragueno (‘Vulture’) and Marco Van Basten was ‘The Swan from Utrecht’.
British exports also got in on the act: John Charles of Juventus was ‘The Good Giant’, Mark Hateley of AC Milan was “Attila” (a mispronunciation of his surname) and Barcelona’s Steve Archibald was ‘Archee’.
I think I’m right in saying that ‘Gazza’ was the first trade-marked football nickname.
Whilst that name used to represent his own peculiar brand of fun and games, those particular jokes have long since and sadly backfired.
Last of all we had Mike Trebilcock, a surprise inclusion in the 1966 Everton FA Cup winning side, who famously scored two goals in the final against Sheffield Wednesday.
Based on Merseyside humour, I’ll let you try to work out for yourself what his nickname was? I’ll give you a clue. It’s a male body part multiplied by three!