Thompson lifts the lid on racial abuse in 1980s
FORMER Coventry City striker Garry Thompson has revealed what it was really like as a black player playing football in the 1980s.
‘Thommo’ was a former goalscoring hero at Highfield Road, rattling in 49 goals in 158 appearances in the late 70s and early 80s.
It’s a time him and the fans will remember fondly, but as he recalls, it wasn’t always a happy one as a player.
We spoke to him about those days as a young black player in an English game that was still riddled with racial abuse from the terraces.
He recalls: “Coventry had Danny Thomas, and myself. West Brom had Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson, there just wasn’t many black players around.
“The ones that there were, were making a name for themselves. You’d go away to certain places though, and you would get dog’s abuse.”
The culture of racism in the early 80s was rife and just down the road from Coventry in Leamington, a political activist had hit the headline for advertising his house for sale only to an ‘English family’.
Robert Relf was imprisoned after refusing to remove his advertisement and was found in breach of the Race Relations Act.
He had an impact on the early Coventry career of Thompson.
He reveals: “When I first went to Coventry there was a fella in the news called Robert Relf.
“Before the Coventry games he was handing out leaflets saying ‘Don’t cheer for the black boy, he’s a tool of the Jews.’
“This is what I was told. They actually gave my mom one of the leaflets, she turned on them with the umbrella.
“The story was picked up by a Daily Mirror journalist at the time, he chatted to me after the game.
“He asked me after an Ipswich game where I scored an equaliser whether the abuse from the terraces bothered me. I was honest and said I couldn’t really hear it.
“I could hear my team-mates and that was about it, when you score, that’s when you take notice of the crowd.
“I was always worried that my family could hear the abuse, but for me, I knew that if I scored – it hurt them.
“In those early 80s, there was a lot of racial abuse flying around at the time.”
Thommo has good memories of his time at the Sky Blues, a club that gave him his big break.
“I was best friends at school with Paul Dyson who was picked up by Coventry, he states.
“They asked him if he had any good friends, and he suggested me.
“I had been playing for Warwickshire with Paul and Andy Blair, Coventry came to see us a few times, but never fancied me despite me scoring all the goals,” he recalls.
“I spent the six weeks holidays down playing for Coventry and got in the reserves at the age of 15 when the main centre-forward got injured.
“I scored and it all started from there really.”