Watching the biff on the telly last week at Headingley had me remembering some of tougher types we used to have in our pack in days gone by. What's the nastiest pack of forwards you can name who turned out for Bradford? You can pick players from any era.

Here's my choices:

Bradford

8. Kelvin Skerrett
9. Tony Fisher
10. Brian McDermott
11. Alan Rathbone
12. Karl Fairbank
13. Len Casey

You'd have to include Frank Foster somewhere, probably in place of Rathbone. Foster didnt have the same hothead reputation but former players have told me that opposing forwards were genuinely frightened of him. www.eraofthebiff.com/p-118.html

You'd have to include Frank Foster somewhere, probably in place of Rathbone. Foster didnt have the same hothead reputation but former players have told me that opposing forwards were genuinely frightened of him. www.eraofthebiff.com/p-118.html

I don't imagine we'd finish any game with all these blokes on the field!

I remember in 88/89 with Skerrett, Fairbank, Hill and Hobbs in the team we dispatched one to the sin bin in nearly every game!

Jimmy Thompson? May not have dished it out quite so much as some others, but definitely one of the toughest.

Anyone seen a pic of Burgess going off last night? That was about as gruesome as it gets from what I could see.

MAte, you're drunk. Jimmy was a true gentleman. Hard as nails, and he would be in my "hard man" pack. But "nasty"? Never in a million.

Anybody hear some Hull fans chanting 'cheat' as he went off?
I laughed, pretty good for the codheads that one

But it's true, he had a blood demijohn hidden in his cheek

Erm . . . . . who's drunk mi old flower????

I know someone who played against Jimmy a few times - played fair he says but like tackling a rock - he hurt you when he tackled you, but it also hurt when you tackled him...

Hey - if you don't like the nomination of Jimmy, lay off Bullpower & take it up with me.

However, I don't disagree with you. I was aligning myself with Bullseye's heading ("toughest"icon_wink.gif rather than the "nastiest" category that he mentioned in the text. Thompson didn't play nasty by default (though he was able to, if pushed), but he played tougher than just about anyone I've seen in the 40 or so years I've been watching. And, as BazzaBull suggests, if you wanted a team that would be intimidating to the opposition, you'd be far better off with Thompson's hard-but-fair tackling than some random biff-merchant.

To take another aspect of "tough" - have we had a forward more impervious to pain than Morrison?

This thread is a bit double edged. The two categories of `hard` and `nasty` are not necessarily mutually inclusive; Jeff Grayshon, for instance, was as hard as nails nut not nasty. On the other hand Leon Pryce could be quite nasty but..........

If looking at hard men of more recent times, would not Sir Bernard warrant a mention in dispatches?

So, who's in your 'hard but fair' pack? Bernard would be a shoe-in for that one.

JP.

Another nominee for both tough and nasty - Jim Mills.

Has got a bit nasty in the last year or so though. Always played fair before, but for some reason, he seems to have developed an angry streak lately.

Ok then give us a hard but fair pack and and nasty barsteward pack.

Mills would be a good for the barstewards.

Although not when he played for us. When he joined us he actually had a reputation as being a bit of a pussy cat. Didnt run his weight, didnt like to make the hard yards and not much of a tackler. He seemed to toughen up considerably with us but didnt really develop the nasty reputation until after he played in aus.

If it's not ungracious of me to suggest so, you may have a small advantage of age over me here. I know that I definitely saw Jim Mills playing for us, but I don't actually [iremember[/i him playing, as I was very young. By the time he was back in the UK, I remember him well. Seem to remember we had another disappointing prop who went on to be great for Widnes - Brian Hogan. We're getting off topic there, though, as I wouldn't put him in the top bracked for either toughness or nastiness for either team.

Hard but fair:

Jimmy Thompson
Tony Fisher
Frank Whitcombe
Trevor Foster
Jamie Peacock
Len Casey


Hard and not necessarily all that fair on occasions. Allegedly.

Kelvin Skerrett
James Lowes
Brian McDermott
Alan Rathbone
Karl Fairbank
Frank Foster

thought that too - especially do of Len.

Yeh but you can only have 6 in a pack, Len has to be in somewhere, and Frank Foster is reputedly the hardest bugger who ever ran on a rugby field, so he has to go in.