I remember thinking it was going to miss the last defender and I had a yard on him I didn’t see it hit
“I remember thinking it was going to miss the last defender and I had a yard on him I didn’t see it hit my foot. A poacher or sniffer of goals hangs around the six-yard box and you don’t often find him dropping back to take part in approach play.”Probably his most celebrated volleyed goal was the last-gasp equaliser against Oldham in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley that put United back on course for the Double. “I am not the type that can keep out of the game hoping just to get on the end of something. I need to be involved for 90 minutes or my concentration goes.” His book explains further.
“If I am involved in setting up play it is very difficult to get myself into the goalmouth before the ball. It has led to his being described as a scorer of great goals rather than a great scorer of goals.”It’s probably true, because I am more of a link player,” he says. Consequently, he has developed other aspects, notably the volleying technique. They know they are not going to get crippled high across the knees or have an elbow smashed into their faces.”His lack of height has always meant that, though a powerful header of the ball when in space, he was never going to win too much in the air against defenders.
“I will stress one simple fact: nobody ever gets seriously hurt against me. Hughes concedes that his technique was found wanting on the Continent – seeing him flounder on Luton’s plastic pitch a few years ago confirmed it – but in the hurly burly of the English game, he has been the bane of many a defender and a boon to many a young striker.”I feel the need to be physically involved in a tough match, otherwise I don’t feel any sense of fulfilment,” says the Hughes auto- biography. He’s built like a brick wall,” says the Liverpool defender Neil Ruddock. “I have never been happy about my disciplinary record,” he admits. “But I could say that I have been lucky not to be booked or sent off more.”Not the big man he looks on the pitch – 5ft 9in and 12 stone – he has nevertheless made the most of a stocky frame “A freak of nature. I don’t find it hard to walk away.”He has had trouble doing so on the pitch, however.
Last week against Wimbledon, for example, Hughes – sent off six times in his career – kicked out at Alan Reeves but missed. I reacted angrily at first, like any normal person would have done, but you have just got to hold back. Last season, he was punched by a spectator at Swindon but it was submerged when Cantona was later sent off for stamping on John Moncur “Nothing was ever done. Until the Frenchman’s arrival, Hughes was criticised for being difficult to partner, blamed for the drying up of goals from Brian McClair. “With Eric, I hadn’t heard anything for two and a half years until Andy Cole came, though the 9-0 seems to have quietened it down.” Indeed, he believes that the differences of the pair – he liking ball to feet, Cole wanting it in his path – might even bring more attacking options.Hughes, incidentally, has been through a Cantona incident himself. When Alex Ferguson brought him back to Old Trafford, the relief was huge Gratitude has been mutual.
“Mark is a warrior with whom you could trust your life,” Ferguson wrote in the foreword to Hughes’s “autobiography”, Hughesie – The Red Dragon, penned by David Meek.Typically, Hughes begins his book not with himself but a tribute to Eric Cantona for lifting his career. I should have said to myself, `Right, I’m here for good,’ but I didn’t have that mentality at that time.” A sad Venables describes the parting as being due to “personality and immaturity”.He was loaned to Bayern Munich and began to enjoy his football again but the Continent held little appeal for a home-loving man. Exhortations by Lineker to “think of the readies” failed to lift his spirits.”Along with not reaching the finals of a major championship with Wales, it is the main regret of my career that I didn’t make the most of that opportunity,” Hughes says “I set out thinking I would be there for two years. While the Nou Camp warmed to Gary Lineker, Hughes’s link play was deemed unremarkable and gradually became negated by Spanish referees clamping down on the physical tussling with defenders that was, still is, so central to his game.
