capped player now lives on caravan site and reveals he left a STUD in Man Utd rival's kneecap

IT’S fitting that Chelsea’s all-time record appearance maker is settled less than five miles from the 18 lions of Longleat.

For no player in the club’s 121-year history has been more fearsome and ferocious than the ultra-hardman defender, nicknamed ‘Chopper’.

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On Sunday, the club with a badge of “a lion rampant regardant” – a lion standing on hind legs looking backwards” – faced Leeds at Wembley, for the first time since Harris led out the Blues against the Whites in the infamous 1970 FA Cup final.

Chelsea players, though, have been playing more like pussycats of late, losing five Premier League matches in a row and failing to score a goal in the process.

How interim boss Calum McFarlane must wish he had a ‘Chopper’ to call on right now.

He watched Chelsea’s 1-0 win from a holiday park in Westbury, Wiltshire, where he spends most of the year.

His daughter Claire – who runs the Legacy Racing Club with her dad being patron and former stars Sir Geoff Hurst and Dion Dublin also involved – lives nearby and his sons Mark and Paul visit regularly.

Now 81 and suffering from short-term memory loss, he finds it difficult to be critical of the club where he made a staggering record 795 appearances, during almost two decades at Stamford Bridge.

Up until about a year ago he was one of the roster of former players hosting fans in boxes at home games and the club stepped in recently to pay for a couple of MRI scans.

Chopper became the first Blues player to lift the FA Cup 56 years ago, after a 2-1 extra-time replay win over Leeds in an Old Trafford replay, following a 2-2 draw at Wembley.

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That game was rated so violent, highly respected referee David Elleray – going through the footage in 1997 – said he would have sent off six players and dished out 20 yellows!

But Chopper has an axe to grind with the modern game.

He told SunSport: “They fall over so easy today and roll around. When a racehorse falls at a fence and lays still, it lays still because it’s hurt.

“If it gets up and trots away it’s fine. The players today, the first thing they want to do if they get in the penalty area is fall over. Football has become like a non-contact sport.

“That is the big difference today with the players in my time? You only went down if you were hurt.

“Today they go down so easily – you’ve only got to push someone and they fall over holding their faces and you get booked.

“I wouldn’t last ten minutes these days – football’s now a non-contact sport. If there is a game on the television today and it didn’t involve Chelsea, and there was a rugby international on, I’d rather watch the rugby.

“In rugby they don’t fall over, roll around and moan and groan like they do in football.

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“The other big difference is in my day you played if you weren’t 100 per cent fit. I pulled a muscle and hadn’t trained for about three weeks before the Cup Final at Wembley.

“They said if I had an injection I’d get away with it – and that is why I came off (in the 90th minute) because I was absolutely f***ed!

“In my era if you weren’t feeling too well you’d go to the physio and he’d say ‘take these two Disprins and get out in the fresh air’. Today they’ve only got to sneeze and they are out for a week.”

Harris also recalled how the Wembley surface was shockingly bad back in 1970.

He added: “The state of the pitch was a disgrace – it was a s***heap. They had the Horse of the Year Show a few days before.

“But nobody complained, you just got on with it. I’d like to see how players of today would cope with a pitch like that.”

As for Chopper’s antics in the two 1970 final games, his early ‘agricultural’ tackle on Leeds ace Eddie Gray in the replay, which neutralised the brilliant winger for the rest of the match, is often seen as key to the Blues ending their FA Cup drought.

He said: “We were kicking lumps out of each other over a period of time but once the whistle went we were fine.

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“Years later at a sportsman’s dinner, he made a special presentation to me, handing me a screw-in stud saying ‘Chopper, you left this in my kneecap at Old Trafford – I thought you’d like it back.’

“Jimmy Greaves used to call his dodgy knee his Ron Harris Memorial Knee.”

Over his amazing career, not one of the five England managers – Walter Winterbottom, Sir Alf Ramsay, Joe Mercer, Don Revie and Ron Green – dropped the slightest hint Harris might be in line for a call-up.

Chopper’s simple explanation was: “They most probably didn’t like my style, the way I used to larrup people. Obviously it would have been nice to play just once.

“I captained the Under-23s, but I never got in the full England side. I would have been proud to do that, but I am proud of my career at Chelsea.

“I don’t think anyone will beat my record of 795 appearances, although they might score more goals (he managed just 14 for the Blues, less than one a year).”

All Harris’s medals and memories are on display at Stamford Bridge and at his home the only indication of his time with Chelsea was a well-worn drinks coaster featuring drawings of him and fellow 1970s heroes Peter Osgood and Peter Bonetti.

He never swapped a shirt once in his career.

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Incredibly, his highest wages at Chelsea was the equivalent in today’s money of £100,000 and a disastrous financial involvement in the golf club he owned in Swindon proved to be an own goal, partly explaining why he is spending his latter years in such humble surroundings.

He added: “A lot of the players today are overpaid prima-donnas.

“A lot of people are fighting for their country earning peanuts and these fellows are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, it is unbelievable.”

What is unbelievable is that ‘Chopper’ played almost 800 games for Chelsea, but is probably only going to be remembered for his nickname.

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