Big Bad Billy Whitehurst

Matthew Bell tells the tales of perhaps the hardest man in football.

Matthew Bell

When United were back in the old First Division in the early 1990s with Dave Bassett in charge they ruffled a few feathers and spoiled a few reputations. They also had some pretty good players, not least Brian Deane, who quickly proved himself worthy of playing at the top level. But despite being a big bloke, Deano was something of a softie, and only once can I remember him losing his rag, when he laid out Nicky Law at Meadow Lane after the Notts County centre half had been kicking him up in the air all game without the referee intervening. Deane was sent off for the only time in his career, but United still won 4-1 with ten men.

Bassett might have realised during the 1989/90 promotion season that Deano needed some help in dealing with tough defenders so he brought in Big Bad Billy Whitehurst to act as his minder. Whitehurst had a – deserved – reputation as being rather hard, but he was also an effective centre forward, as his 47 goals in 195 games for Hull City proved. 

Billy stayed at United after promotion was won, but didn’t play much, and after he was let go he still came to the Lane to watch. In one game, central defender – and another renowned hard man – Neil Ruddock was giving Brian Deane a kicking. Bassett asked Whitehurst, who was attending the game as a spectator, to have a word with Ruddock. Whitehurst takes up the story in Gary Armstrong’s book Blade Runners: “Harry [Bassett] said, ‘Do me a favour and threaten him at half time: stand in the players’ tunnel.’ Ruddock sees me and says, ‘All right Billy?’ I said to him, ‘Don’t all right me,’ and ‘Kick Deansy once more and I’m going to twat you after the match.’ He stood there with his gob open, saying, ‘I haven’t touched him.’” Deane was left alone in the second half.

Years later Ruddock confirmed the truth of this story in an interview in FourFourTwo magazine. When asked who was his toughest opponent he answered: “The hardest was a striker called Billy Whitehurst. I was still a youngster and he would scare the life out of me. One day we were playing Sheffield United and I was delighted when I saw Brian Deane was playing instead of him as I knew I could kick lumps out of Brian. But then at half time Billy came running on to the pitch in his suit and started threatening me!”

This is just one of dozens of stories about Billy’s ‘hardness’, many of them no doubt exaggerated, some of them perhaps apocryphal. Here are a few more:

• Ruddock wasn’t the only defender scared stiff of Billy. Former Liverpool and Scotland captain Alan Hansen wrote in his autobiography: “He was six feet tall and weighed more than thirteen stone and he knew how to exploit this. Indeed, because of his power in the air, aggression and courage, he was one of the opposing strikers who frightened me the most – and I do mean frightened.”

• Manchester City’s Paul Lake once said: “I felt my elbow make full contact with the bridge of another player’s nose and to my horror I realise it’s one William Whitehurst Esq. ‘Oh Christ, anyone but that fucking monster,’ I thought. I nervously glanced over at Brian Gayle who just smiled, made the sign of the cross and jogged away.”

• Niall Quinn, when at Arsenal, described an incident in a game against Oxford United: “Billy hissed at me at a corner, ‘Whoever marks me is going to regret it, I’m going to smash them.’ I catch David O’Leary’s attention, shout to him, ‘You pick him up for this one Dave’ and casually walk off.”

• Hansen again: “At the beginning of every season I would look for Oxford – or whoever he was playing for – because it was a nightmare playing against him.”

• Tony Cascarino wrote in The Times that Billy was the hardest man ever to play football, while Martin Keown said: “My strongest memory is going into a tackle with Billy Whitehurst when I was at Aston Villa for which he was favourite and then, all of a sudden, I was favourite. He let me get the ball and then clattered into me deliberately afterwards. I had scars down my shins for eighteen months.”

• Harry Redknapp had some words of advice for his son Jamie before one his early professional appearances, saying: “Whatever you do, stay away from that lunatic Billy Whitehurst.”

• During his time at United Billy was out in Sheffield city centre one night with a group of teammates. In Henry’s on Cambridge Street they encountered some Wednesday fans, one of whom threw a bottle, which hit David Barnes and cut his face. Billy went over to the culprit and decked him, as Vinnie Jones explained in his autobiography: “Billy threw one of the best right-handers I’ve ever seen – inside or outside a prize-fight ring – and the biggest bloke in the group just crumpled to the floor.”

• Staying with Vinnie, when he became a Hollywood film star he did an ‘Evening with Vinnie Jones’ speaking tour. At one venue Vinnie was asked what it was like to be the hardest man in football. Jones pointed to the front row where special guest Billy Whitehurst was sitting and said: “You best ask that man.”