The rise of the clips compilation video was, on balance, one of the gentler by-products of English football’s post-Italia ’90 boom. The proliferation of VHS stocking fillers started with the likes of Goals Galore! and Saves Galore!, hoovering up the best action from the death throes of the old First Division, before the first tentative yet inevitable steps in the direction of the banter bus were taken via the Danny Baker Cinematic Universe (Own Goals and Gaffs, Freak Football, Right Hammerings etc.) Even in these early days of the genre, long before everyone from Nick Hancock to Olly Murs made an honest day’s living narrating that clip of Peter Devine’s 1991 HFS Northern Premier League Division One Cup Final penalty miss, niches were being sought in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
By the standards of the era, Soccer’s Hard Men still felt like a barrel being scraped. Essentially a cobbled-together collection of goals and meaty tackles from assorted midfield hatchet men of the previous 30 years, interspersed with inane interviews from ex-professionals just about clinging on to the last vestiges of relevance, it was a tough sell. To a nine-year-old in 1992, men like Dave Mackay and Peter Storey may as well have been the handlebar mustachioed figures haunting Victorian cigarette cards. Nor did the sleepy narration from Central TV stalwart Tony ‘Heart of the Country‘ Francis scream ‘edgy’.
The filmmakers, however, had an ace up their sleeve – English football’s resident bogeyman. The video opens with Vinnie Jones in his pants. His involvement with Soccer’s Hard Men would leave him even more brutally exposed…
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