How rugby's toughest ever players earned their nicknames - Page 2 of 5 - Ruck

How rugby’s toughest ever players earned their nicknames

Bobby Windsor AKA ‘The Iron Duke’

The steelworker and cornerstone of the dominant Welsh team of the 1970s he was renowned for bringing the physicality needed for his day job onto the pitch. His nickname came though not from the furnaces or pitches of South Wales, but from a French Rugby Union official. Les Bleus and Windsor’s Wales had some fearsome tussles in this period and in a speech post-dinner after one fixture, he was christened ‘the Iron Duke’ – a nickname first given to Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington; another man who knew a thing or two about defeating the French under difficult conditions. 

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