Julian Dicks never stood on ceremony when there was an opposition winger to deposit summarily in the stands or a penalty to despatch with ballistic force.
When conveying his opinion, he always preferred succinct vernacular ahead of spin doctor's waffle. And the shaven head to which West Ham fans rallied like the beacon at a zebra crossing would still put a marine to shame.
The Terminator is back – as a first-team coach at Watford, renewing a long-standing double act with his old room-mate Slaven Bilic going back more than 25 years to their alliance as robust yeomen in the Hammers defence.
Dicks admits they did not always observe the laws of abstinence, especially on distant assignments.
“We were playing Liverpool away at Anfield where, nine times out of 10, you're going to get your a***s kicked,” he laughed.
“I think Slav went through two bottles of red wine, I went through a bottle of Jack Daniels and at 2.30 in the morning I'm puking out of the bedroom window. Next day we went to Anfield and drew 0-0 and I've no idea how we did it.
“Don't get me wrong, I used to take a bottle away with me – every Friday, that's what I used to do. I didn't always drink the full bottle, but that's what we did back then. When you look back now, you think, 'How the hell did we do that?' And I was marking Robbie Fowler that day.”
Since his bionic knee gave up on him at the end of the last century, Dicks has run a pub, tried to become a professional golfer and coached at all levels from non-League to women's football and the Premier League.
His last stopover was an elite kids' programme in North Carolina, but when Bilic sent a distress flare to a familiar sidekick, looking for more 'Britishness' in the Hornets' multi-national dressing room, he could not resist, admitting: “Slav is the only person I would have come back for.”
It is good to have a straight talker back in the mainstream. In hindsight, he accepts golf was always going to be a tough nut to crack.
“I took it up because I'd had a reconstruction on my knee,” said Dicks. “I'd been out a long time and remember going in to see John Green, the physio at West Ham, and telling him, 'I'm bored with being an alcoholic.'
When he referred me to the specialist, the surgeon advised me to play golf. I looked at him and said, 'That's an old man's game – I'm not doing that.' But I took it up, played off five handicap and went to see Denis Pugh, the pro at my local club who coached Colin Montgomerie for years.
“I told him I wanted to turn pro if I could, so he watched me hit a few balls and said, 'Your swing's s***.' Although I got down to scratch, I was never good enough to reach the next level. There's only so many times you can pay £500 to play in a competition and not get anything back.
“So I ran a pub called the Shepherd and Dog in Langham, near Colchester, and I worked at the bar, six days a week, and I enjoyed it until we sold up. But football never left me. I miss playing every day, it's always there, it's in your blood. But coaching will never replace playing.”
Like most frustrated Englishmen, Dicks was an anguished onlooker as the Three Lions bowed out of yet another World Cup cursing their fortunes from the penalty spot.
And you can imagine his disgust at the platoon of simpering fops who complicate a perfectly straightforward exercise with dummies, shimmies, hops, skips and jumps to take a penalty.
“I never messed about,” he scowled. “I used to start my run-up from outside the box and hit it as hard as I could. It was just a question of whether the keeper was brave enough to get in the way. A professional footballer shouldn't miss the target from 12 yards. I can understand you might hit the post or bar, but you should never miss it altogether.
“You would back Harry Kane to score all day long, and his first penalty against France was superb, but he missed the second by a country mile. Even the best player in the world (Lionel Messi) missed one earlier in the tournament. We were lucky at West Ham – Ray Stewart took about 70 penalties in his career and rarely missed. When I took over from him, I took 16 penalties in the Premier League and scored 15. We had a very high ratio of success.”
Bilic and Dicks guided the Hammers to seventh in the Premier League in 2016 and West Brom to promotion three years ago, and the Terminator believes there's enough talent in the Hornets' squad to mount another charge towards the Championship summit.
He won't, however, be encouraging them to copy the bulldog virtues which served him well – but also incurred nine red cards.
Dicks, now 54, said: “I know what Slav meant by 'Britishness' but I don't know one player now who plays the game in the way myself or Roy Keane did. They are extinct. It's all 'nice' football these days, that stand-offish kind of thing. With referees now, and the way the game has gone, I would probably have got a red card every other week – which is a shame because I never set out to hurt anyone.
“My job was to help win games by being aggressive and not letting opponents go past me. I started out at Birmingham City with the likes of Mark Dennis, Noel Blake, Mick Harford and Robert Hopkins. I was training with them at 16 and they used to kick the s*** out of me – but it made me grow up fast.”
