Do you remember the hard men of football? The ones who would get into scraps week in, week out, who would shed blood – their own and other people’s – for the cause and who would then have pints with the fans afterwards? The person I’m talking about today did all that and more and currently holds the record for the most red cards in the pro game with 22. I’m of course referring to “Red Card” Roy McDonough.

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Roy McDonough

Roy McDonough – now there is a name from the past. Having been booted out of the Villa youth setup for throttling a ref, Roy played as a Blues apprentice between 1976 and 1978, making two league appearances and scoring once – in the final game of the 76/77 season against QPR.

Reading about Roy’s exploits reminds me a lot of a Geoff Horsfield style player. The kind of bloke who’d tackle hard for the ball, who’d use every trick on the book to win the ball for his team. He didn’t score many throughout his career – like Horsfield, he did the donkey work for other players to allow them to grab the glory. After a couple of years up at Walsall, McDonough had an ill-fated spell at Chelsea where he didn’t make a first team appearance. He then came back down the divisions to play for Colchester United – where hs is now a legend, having led them to the FA Trophy/Conference double as player manager in 1992, Southend United (where again he is remembered fondly), Exeter City and Cambridge United.

I could talk about his player stats but I don’t think they’d give a measure of the man. This was a bloke who told his team’s physio he’d cut back his drinking to seventy (70) pints per week. This is the bloke who was willing to wade into the fans for a ruck pre-Cantona, and wouldn’t pale at offering outside an unruly supporter in the player’s bar post-game. McDonough was the walking archetype of the eighties football player – a serial womaniser, a drinker and a proper hardman.

I reviewed his book for the Sunday Mercury, and I will say now that if there is one footballer’s autobiography you read this year, make it this one. In a day when football has become sanitised, where players are so far apart from the fans it’s as if they’re from a different world at times and where winning everything is king it’s refreshing to read about the rough and tumble of ife in the 80’s lower leagues. You can’t help but smile at some of what Roy got up to and I was left feeling I’d really got to know the bloke.

The book “Red Card Roy” by Roy McDonough and Bernie Friend, published by Vision Sports Publishing is out now and I hope to be interviewing the man himself in the next month or so.

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