Julian Dicks says he would take modern day footballers to hell if given just five minutes in a Prem game. The West Ham cult hero earned a fearsome reputation as one of football’s toughest defenders during an era when crunching challenges were part and parcel of the game.
And Dicks, who spoke to the Star on behalf of the British Heart Foundation and Sky Bet, says that his approach if he was dropped into a match today would be simple. He would make sure his opponent knew exactly what he was in for from the very first tackle.
Dicks told the Daily Star: “First tackle, I would f***ing nail you. I would nail you. My managers used to say to you, ‘First five minutes, put them in Row Z.’
“That was my tactical talk from my managers, which I didn’t really need because that was my game. You had to look after yourself.”
Dicks, 58, reckons that today’s stars are afforded far greater protection by referees, and admits some of the challenges he got away with would now land him in serious trouble.
He recalled one particularly savage incident against Sunderland striker Julian Rush back in 1992, saying: “The ball was coming down and I literally put my studs through his chest.
“He just got up straight away. He had a bit of a moan to the referee and the referee just waved it on. I did get booked.
“Nowadays I would have probably been banned for about nine games. I literally caught him in the chest with my studs, the bottom of my boot hit him in the chest. You got away with a lot more back then because, for me, it was a tougher game.”
And Dicks makes no secret of the fact hurting people and inflicting pain was a big part of winning his physical and psychological battles.
He explained: “As a player, I wanted to hurt the other player. I did want to. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to go over the top of the ball and break his leg or anything like that.
“But if it was a 50/50, I wanted to go in, I wanted to hurt him and I wanted him to stay on the floor.”
Dicks reckons that physicality allowed defenders of his generation to deal with flying wingers in a way modern players simply aren’t equipped to.
He added: “If I kicked them properly, nine times out of ten they’re not coming back. You can’t tackle them now. If you do, you get booked, you do it again, you get sent off. But I could stop them because I could kick them. That was the nature of the game back then.”
Dicks was speaking to the Star on behalf of Sky Bet’s Every Minute Matters campaign, which is teaming up with the British Heart Foundation and has already inspired 500k footie fans in learning lifesaving CPR and funded hundreds of defibrillators at sports grounds and facilities up and down the country.