The picture is from Marching on Together
When Norman Hunter died last week it was natural that the broadcast news should include clips of his career highlights, however unedifying. Hunter was one of the most significant footballers of his generation. In an era of hard men – in a teak-hard Leeds United team – he stood out.
But the highlights reels revealed an aspect of Hunter’s play that can’t help but catch the eye, 50 years later. All the fouls featured were committed with the boot. Hunter was indeed a footballer. Neither on the BBC News nor in many of the YouTube compilations will you see Hunter grappling with an opponent. He summarily chopped men down, rather than hauling them down with his hands, arms or upper body.
Is that to Norman Hunter’s credit? No, it probably made him more dangerous than would be tolerated today. But the famous ‘duty of care’ that players are said to owe opponents seems a convenient piece of hypocrisy anyway. Grappling has not replaced hacking, stamping, scraping etc – it has joined them in the modern footballer’s armoury.
On the other hand… there is a certain honesty, perhaps almost purity, about the way Hunter played. His job was to stop opponents from scoring. How much easier it would have been had the use of the arms been legitimate – or even mandatory – in his day.
In the event it was one of Hunter’s team-mates who changed football in that respect. When Jack Charlton was allowed by referees to get away with standing on the goal-line in front of the goalkeeper at corners, the game changed forever. In particular, the days of an offence previously referred to as ‘obstruction’ were numbered.
The argument Leeds made was that Charlton was entitled to stand where he liked at a corner-kick. That much was true; but his purpose was to impede, distract, perhaps intimidate but certainly to get in the way of the goalkeeper. From there it was a short step to other overt forms of obstruction – ‘shepherding’ the ball out for a throw-in or goal-kick, for example. And with obstruction effectively part of the game, it was natural that use of the arms should follow. When, then, was the last time you saw an indirect free-kick awarded for “impeding the progress of an opponent”? Instead, something similar to rugby’s ‘hand-off’ is routine whenever the ball goes near a player with a marker within reach.
It is to be expected that in half a century the game might have changed. Norman Hunter was a good enough footballer to have made a career in it if he were starting out again now.
