The greatest beards in world sports, part II – in pictures

In the beginning, there was the greatest cricketer a) ever to have lived and b) ever to have taken the only course of action open to a true gentleman when confronted with complaints about shaving and its deleterious effect on the the plughole in the bathroom sink. I give you Dr WG Grace, of MCC, Gloucestershire, London County and England, circa 1902. Photograph: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Almost a hundred years later, there was Beefy, possibly a) the second-greatest cricketer ever to have lived and b) the best putative casting for the lead role in a long overdue TV adaptation of the Flashman novels. Here, England's Ian Botham and his noble yeoman's beard enjoy together a small cigar, or possibly cheroot, after flaying the Australians in the Fourth Test at Edgbaston in 1981. Botham was man of the match – the beard won a silver salver and a special jeroboam of Cornhill-sponsored champagne-style wine. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images

Yes, I said football – or soccer, defiantly, commenters who keep complaining about America – didn't have much of a tradition when it came to the sporting of suitably sporting face-fuzz. Here to kick-off a lengthy and well-deserved rebuke is the great George Best, in his Manchester United kit in 1972 and with a somewhat boutique offering – just before the wheels came off and the clippers were, possibly aggravatingly if not causationally, put away. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images

…and here, circa 1971, is Sheffield United's Trevor Hockey, of whom I had never heard. Now I have heard of him and I am duly and tremendously impressed. You don't see beards like this on footballers anymore – as much as you don't see such old-school leg muscles, hauser-esque, cably things formed by nothing more than running up and down the slag heaps Yorkshire still had in those days. Nice Zapata on the chap behind, too. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas Sports Photography

And finally, before we leave retro corner, we have the West Germany defender Paul Breitner, pictured in 1982. Words, of course, cannot do justice. Full beard + afro + slightly disconcerting stare + Maoist politics = model for morally ambivalent professor at new university in novel by David Lodge or Malcolm Bradbury, and/thus/or a dead ringer for my Dad. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas Sports Photography

Into or towards the present day, we arrive at the example of the Manchester United and Ireland great Roy Keane, here in his days as manager of Sunderland, a job which as any fule kno is enough to turn the pointy chin bit of any chap's beard white. In the course of discussing the last gallery, word reached me from an old London colleague that Keane now looks “looks like Santa's drunk and furious younger brother”. I couldn't possibly comment. Photograph: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images Europe

The absence of Sweden's Olof Mellberg from our first list caused considerable comment, and not only from a Swede in the Guardian's London office, the football editor no less, who has a slightly disconcerting emotional attachment to the chap. You have to say, it's a solid effort – somehow more, I don't know, Thirty Years War than 'Viking', as is that sported by Erik Lund, the Norwegian rugby player who we picked out last time. But then, the Vikings didn't come from Sweden. I think. Or did they? Top beard, either way. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

Yes, yes. Andrea Pirlo. I am truly sorry that I forgot about the Italy midfielder. He's a genius and he's genuinely quite old for a top footballer but he's still going strong – no doubt in large part thanks to his superb facial hair, which is of a tarry Mediterranean lustre that simply disallows the whole concept of going grey and slowing down. It's like bitumen. I'd like to think Pirlo gives something of an idea about what Trevor Hockey would look like if subject to a modern fitness regime. I may also be the first person ever to compare the two. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images South America

I didn't forget Davide Moscardelli of Bologna – I simply hadn't heard of him. Glad I have now, of course, although I am still a little suspicious of what appears to be evidence of 'styling' in parts of his otherwise bristlingly raw and natural marvel. Can one ever trust a footballer not to do silly things with his hair, whether it's on top of or on the front and sides of his face? A question for the ages. Photograph: Mario Carlini / Iguana Press/Getty Images Europe

Back to rugby union, and to New Zealand. Here's the Fijian Api Naikatini, playing in a club match a few years ago. Alas, we couldn't find a photo of what the ITM Cup star looks like these days – at least, not from any of the agencies the Guardian uses. That explains the admittedly-impressive-but strictly-speaking-barred-from-these-galleries Abraham Lincoln chinstrap he wears here. Think of this beard with added moustache, added length and added mohican on top, and there you'll have it. Remarkable work. Photograph: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images AsiaPac

Being lost for the appropriate words with which to describe the beard worn by the South African back row Josh Strauss, who has now completed the necessary quarantine period and installed his magnificent specimen in a suitably airy, light and fecund greenhouse somewhere in Glasgow, I'm reduced to wondering exactly which Confederate Civil War general he resembles most. Maybe James Longstreet crossbred with Stonewall Jackson? If nothing else, it's an image. Photograph: Gallo Images/Getty Images Europe

And yes, there's rugby league too. This is David Williams of the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, Australia's nearly but not quite finest, who goes by an entirely deserved but in the end somewhat predictable nickname: The Wolfman. Top marks for the headband of household insulation tape, which helps make him look like a sort of larrikin Socrates. Also for the stripy mouthguard which makes him also resemble an illustration of the mythical Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean which terrified me as a child. Unless those are his teeth, I suppose. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images AsiaPac

Back to the NFL, and to Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles. Shaggy of hair and excessively grizzly of chin, the center has become something of a cult figure – somewhat predictably, his beard now has its own Twitter account, @JkelceBeard. Sample, slightly irascible tweet: 'By 2015, the NFL's weekly awards will look something like 'Downy Super Soft's Arm Tackle' or 'Dove Lotion's Push Out of Bounds' of the Week.' I'm guessing Kelce's beard doesn't see too much moisturising soap or lotion itself. Photograph: Al Bello/Getty Images

This is the USA ultra runner Anton Krupicka, taking full advantage of his sport's suitability for the wearing of sunglasses more commonly seen on the average Williamsburg or Park Slope hipster in order to top off a distinctly impressive, full-but-not-too-full privet. Rangy, headbanded, bearded, long-haired and (thanks to his rather niche sport) slightly out of place … that makes Krupicka the Oddball (meaning Donald Sutherland in Kelly's Heroes, obviously) of bearded sportsmen. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP

I'm guessing that the beard found on the UFC fighter 'Big Country' Roy Nelson (on his face, that is – he may well have the beards of his vanquished enemies sewn like scalps on his jockstrap, if such fellows do such things, as I rather suspect they might) is on the same page of the beard-spotters' guide as Jason Kelce. The full 'gentleman of the road', this beard seems to have had a little more work put into it than Nelson's biceps or abs. Not that I'd tell him that. Photograph: Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

And finally, another UFC fighter, though now an undefeated professional boxer and sometime actor in such cinematic milestones as Circle of Pain (me neither) and The Scorpion King 3 – Battle for Redemption. I finished the first gallery with a swipe at the sculpted, gelled and downright dilletantish David Beckham. Let it be said, then, that if Becks ever again takes his beard less than seriously, the unutterably great Kimbo Slice (real name Kevin Ferguson) will be the one doing the swiping. And as of course there is no topping the greatness of Kimbo Slice, this is … the end. Photograph: J Kopaloff/Getty Images North America