Football's hardest man Billy Whitehurst talks life at Sheffield United, fighting rival fans and breaking into Bramall Lane

Widely heralded as the hardest man to have ever played professional football, Whitehurst's reputation precedes him. But love it or loath it, there is no denying that his unique style of play was as effective as it was difficult to deal with.

He won promotion to the First Division with Sheffield United in 1989/90, and is a hero at Hull City after helping them from the fourth tier into the second inside three seasons. He was at a time Newcastle United's record signing, playing alongside the likes of Gascoigne and Beardsley and lavished with praise by Sir Bobby Charlton.

But the 'other side' of his game is why, some years on from retirement, he is still spoken about with either fondness or trepidation, depending on whether you played alongside or against him. Vinnie Jones wrote about the time Whitehurst knocked out a Wednesday fan, outside a Sheffield bar, in his autobiography. Whitehurst once apparently played the second half of a game with a hole in his cheek, after ordering his physio to staple - literally - shut a gaping wound caused by a pub brawl.

As part of a series of interviews with Bramall Lane old boys, Whitehurst's story intrigued me more than most and when he agreed to meet, at The Angel pub in Ackworth, it was a mixture of excitement, relief and apprehension. For the course of our interview, I needn't have worried.

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It was a crisp winter's day in Wakefield when Whitehurst swept through the doors of The Angel and even for someone who wasn't old enough to remember him pulling on that red and white shirt, there was no mistaking him.

First impressions? He looked hard. To me, like a man look would if he was chiselled out of whatever rock-hard material used to be mined in the pits of his village of Thurnscoe. His hands were like shovels and his nose was weathered, let's say, with the scars of countless battles, both on and off the pitch. But appearances couldn’t be more deceiving.

A former bricklayer plucked from local football obscurity by Hull, Whitehurst was warm and engaging company, even going out of his way to offer a lift back to the train station after our chat. His humble beginnings gave him a grounding still evident to this day and as a player, he vowed never to walk off a football pitch having given less than his absolute maximum. And then some for good measure.

His time at United, under Dave "Harry" Bassett, was brief and typically eventful.

"Harry never really used to give me any other instructions when I came on, apart from: 'Go and cause some b******s, son'," Whitehurst grinned, with the expression of a man who didn't exactly mind doing just that.

"Even after I had left United, he had me at it. I had left to join Doncaster Rovers and went back to Bramall Lane to watch them play Southampton. Me and my lad, who was only 10, were sat by the side of the pitch when Keith Mincher came up to me and said that Harry wanted me to have a word with Neil Ruddock when he came off at half time.

"Harry wanted me to politely request that Razor left Brian Deane alone.

"It was quite an embarrassing situation, really. Looking back, it's the most embarrassing thing I ever did, and I did some very embarrassing things.

"So the whistle went and as Ruddock walked towards me, he said: 'Alright, Bill?'

"'Don't alright me', I said to him. 'If you go near Deano in the second half and keep doing what you're doing, I'm going to smash you'.

"That's embarrassing to remember, but I did it for Harry. And I wasn't even his player at the time! He made you want to go above and beyond for him."

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Part of Whitehurst's legend is possibly that he is one of the last players of his type to have played in English football. He freely admits that he wouldn't last two minutes today in modern football - "Put me in a time machine and onto the pitch now and I’d probably get 12 years down the line" - and one of the many stories about him centres around a game against Bournemouth, when three opponents ended up being knocked out at once. Harry Redknapp, Bournemouth's manager at the time, said that Mike Tyson wouldn't have lasted two minutes with Whitehurst that day. "I didn't even get booked," the man himself shrugged.

After hanging up his boots following spells in Northern Ireland, China and Hong Kong, Whitehurst returned to Bramall Lane to take over the Cricketers Arms pub across the road from United's ground - and joined former teammate and current Blades boss Chris Wilder for an impromptu kickabout on their old stomping ground while the John Street stand was being rebuilt.

"It was about one in the morning and we were p***** as rats," he laughed.

"There was this rickety fencing so we climbed over it and had a 12-a-side game on the pitch. A few years later, Chris was back there as manager.

"That, for me, just summed him up as a Blade. He'd played there so many times before but couldn't resist one more game on his pitch. From the top of his head to his toe nails, he is a Blade. Through and through."

Like many players from Bassett's era, Whitehurst bought into the Blades as much as anyone and the story of a scrap with the Wednesday hooligan has gone down in folklore. A group of Wednesday fans stumbled into Henry's bar, saw some United players and a glass was thrown in the players' direction, shattering and cutting left-back David Barnes.

"Billy threw one of the best right-handers I've ever seen - inside or outside a prize-fight ring - and the biggest bloke in the group just crumpled to the floor," Jones wrote in his book.

So many Whitehurst tales have been exaggerated with time - like the one about him asking United's physio to treat his greyhound actually happened, according to the man himself, when he was at Oxford - but the Henry's brawl is possibly the defining one. Not one to start trouble, but one certainly capable of finishing it.

Thank you for reading this article, one of dozens we publish every single day to provide you with the best, most up-to-date and most informative coverage of YOUR club. This depth of Blades coverage costs, so to help us maintain the high-quality reporting that you are used to from the football team at The Star, please consider taking out a subscription to our new discounted sports-only package. You'll find all the details HERE. Your support is much appreciated. Chris Holt, Football Editor