Kevin Davies - football's last action hero (From The Bolton News)

Kevin Davies - football's last action hero

8:00am Saturday 7th November 2009

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KEVIN Davies seems to have been termed an old fashioned English centre forward since the day he burst onto the scene with Chesterfield as a 16-year-old.

But as he chalked off his 500th start as a professional this week, he reluctantly accepts that he might well be the last of a dying breed.

As a Wanderers fan, there can be few more rewarding sights than Super Kev in full flow, be it as a human battering ram challenging in their air with a centre half, or hunting down an unwitting full-back dwelling too long on the ball.

Still in good nick at 32, and despite some recent bumps and bruises, Davies should be around for a good few years yet. But the striker himself admits that, in the modern game, there are few candidates ready to take on his mantle when he does decide to hang up his battle-worn boots.

“I hope there is someone out there,” he said. “But the game is changing. There is a lot more skill and the physical side is dying out.

“There are so many laws coming in now that you watch a game and the referee is blowing his whistle every minute for a little shove or a push.

“You have to be careful. There is reckless stuff still around and referees are right to punish high tackles and things like that, but you aren’t really allowed much contact now.”

Perhaps his former manager Sam Allardyce is right, maybe football is turning into a game for pansies.

Certainly, it is hard to imagine who Wanderers will turn to when their talismanic skipper does decide to call it a day, such has been his impact on the club since arriving six years ago from Southampton.

In that time, Davies has become one of the Premier League’s most feared front men, sometimes quite literally.

He has often found himself having to defend his physical style in a 10-year Premier League career, especially in the midst of back-handed criticism from Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Rafa Benitez and the like.

But in recent times, Wanderers boss Gary Megson claims people are finally wising up — maybe nostalgically — to the fact that his skipper does represent something absent in most modern-day strikers.

Davies continues to lead the foul charts, he claims more by virtue of Wanderers’ style than any spite on his part, and insists he is not about to change.

“I don’t think I could change if I tried,” said the former Blackburn player. “My record isn’t too bad — I only had a few yellows last season and haven’t had a red for a while. My discipline has been pretty good for the last few years, even though the foul thing is always brought up — but the way we play, there are always going to be fouls given against me. And hopefully, for me. That’s just the style we play.

“It’s been going on since Fergie brought it up a few years ago, and it flares up every once in a while.

“There are a few firm challenges I make and I feel they are fair. I remember the one on (Arsenal’s) Gael Clichy a couple of years ago and I thought it was a fair one.

“I was given a yellow card and was a bit disappointed. But I spoke to him after the game and we were fine. It’s a man’s sport, isn’t it?”

Anyone who speaks regularly to Davies will know the issue of diving, or ‘simulation’, comes up regularly in conversation. Suffice to say, it is not a concept that the Wanderers man agrees with.

“I don’t like that side of the game at all,” he said. “I’m probably one of the last people to think like that.

“I don’t know whether it is coached in Europe, to try and win free-kicks, but it isn’t something I have ever been told to do. It is part of the game. It is played at such a pace now that it only takes a little touch to send someone crashing to the floor.

“But I don’t think you have to. A lot of the balls we play are in the air, but unless you are really getting a shove, you don’t need to go down.

“When someone is climbing on top of you, I can stay on my feet. Without falling, I should still be able to win free-kicks.”

A fair point, well put, but in 500 career starts Davies has probably figured out that he shouldn’t start holding his breath.

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