The autobiography of Pat Van Den Hauwe with a foreword by Howard Kendall and Terry Venables. There is no place on a football pitch in the 21st century for player contact let alone hard, robust tackling that could earn you a nick-name such as 'Psycho'. Twenty-five years ago the game was different and players were actually allowed to rough an opponent up and let them know they were going into a 90 minute battle. Only when they really over-stepped the mark were their names taken by the ref. Today's so called “hard players” the Steven Gerrard's, the John Terry's, the Patrick Vieria's may not have had their reputations in the 80's as they would have had to earn them by mixing it with the real hard men of football, the Stuart Pearce's, the Mick Harford's and the Pat Van Den Hauwe's. But Pat Van Den Hauwe was not just a tough player on the pitch. His whole life demanded that he was tough. A reputation brings people into your life who try and find out if there is mileage in it and Van Den Hauwe attracted those type of people by the bus-load. This is probably the most explicit book every written by a former player as throughout his career, and long after he left the game, Pat Van Den Hauwe courted danger and very nearly paid the ultimate price for living life to the extreme.
