Ken Jones: Days when the hard men were hailed as heroes

Quick now! For a short lesson in the history of games playing, a course entitled: "Whatever happened to manliness in sport?" Who were the two English footballers who put Italy to flight by setting out to discover how fast they could limp?

Of course you don't remember. They are about to become trivia answers such as who was first to score for both teams in an FA Cup final (Bert Turner of Charlton in 1946), or, when did the ball burst (same game), and what are the odds against the royal flush in poker?

People who now rate as old-timers weren't born in 1934 when Wilf Copping of Arsenal and Jack Barker of Leeds put the boot into Italy, the World Cup holders, after vicious fouling broke the nose of England's captain, Eddie Hapgood, and caused their robust centre-forward, Ted Drake, to leave the field with blood pouring from a leg wound. Italy did not so much lose a match, and their reputation as the world masters, but what became known as the Battle of Highbury.

English sports correspondents of the time hailed Copping and Barker as heroes. Unlike the vanquished Italians, who were seen as sly, they were hard but fair. By all accounts, few who followed English football at that time disputed the description. After all, Copping, whose rugged features bore the blue scars of youthful toil in the Yorkshire coalfield, was never sent off or cautioned throughout his career with Leeds and Arsenal.

Even in the early 1950s, when, as a teenage professional with Southend, I came under his influence, Copping represented a time that was different and from which the game would pull further and further away.

Truth of it is, of course, that Copping and Barker and all those guys who went along their hard way hearing not a word of condemnation, and even players of a more recent vintage, would be unmasked today by intense television scrutiny. From Copping's own words, what would the cameras have revealed about his sleeves-up contribution to that infamous encounter with the Italians? "They started it, then me and Jack got stuck into them, put three of the bastards off the field in 10 minutes," I remember him saying. I remember him saying other things, such as it's easier to play against 10 men than 11, even easier against nine (no substitutes then). That you tackled from the top down, "forehead in first".

It shows how far we have come in the years since Copping and many others were still able to advance a blunt philosophy, how far along the road of correctness in sport, that they would have found modern interpretation of the rules (the laws in football) laughable.

It isn't that long ago since a manager in the old First Division greeted the announcement of a fair-play team award by remarking that it was the league in which his players had better finish bottom if they knew what was good for them. I imagine he'd heard a story told by Joe Mercer about Harry Storer, who managed Derby County and other clubs with a keen eye for evidence of cowardice.

As the Sheffield United manager, Mercer was reported to have said that two unidentified Derby players should have been sent off in a match between the clubs from which Storer was absent. Storer called to ask for their names. "Harry, I don't want to get them in trouble," Mercer said. "Trouble!" Storer exploded. "It's the other nine I want to know about."

Times have changed, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. If we have acquired a new sense of how sports performers should behave on the field there was something to be said for old ways especially in matters of comportment. Brought up to believe that opportunities for retribution would in time present themselves, players seldom, if ever, raised their fists in retaliation. "If I ever see you raise a hand on the field, I'll kick you straight up the arse," was another thing Copping used to say.

Sometimes, you have to think that sport is descending into a twilight of reason and language, the definition of violent play becoming so clouded that players seldom know where they are, often collecting yellow and red cards for offences that are nothing more serious than errors in timing.

Only a fool would turn a blind eye to thuggery in sport but the words of an old Welsh miner appear to have as much meaning today as they did when I first heard them. Asked about violent play, he adjusted his muffler, reset his cap and said: "When you work underground, fearing that the roof will come in on your head, you don't worry about a boot in your face on a Saturday."