Daily Mirror

Regis was not only a first generation pioneer but also a very special revolution­ary

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The atmosphere at grounds when Regis appeared was utterly toxic Football sounds a lot better now because of men like Cyrille

I SPENT the late 70s in the West Midlands, playing and watching a lot of football there.

My most vivid memory of Sunday League dressing room banter was “jokes” of every type about West Brom’s three black players Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis.

My memory of watching the “Three Degrees” play was a combinatio­n of technique, pace and power, which set them apart from many of the plodders around them. And the hate the very sight of them drew from many opposition fans.

In the minutes before they ran on to the pitch, away from The Hawthorns or in the visiting end there, you could feel an ugly tension build.

As they came into view, a torrent of monkey grunts, chants of “Get back on your jam jar” and a variation of n-word insults would pollute the air. It was utterly toxic.

But, in an era when the National Front were leafleting outside grounds and peak-time TV shows like Love Thy Neighbour and The Comedians relied on racism for most of the punchlines, it all seemed like normal banter.

Which is maybe why I can’t recall any journalist writing about it, referee reporting it, club condemning it, TV panel discussing it or politician raising it. That was just life back then. It was what Cyrille Regis, who’s just died, aged 59, took on every time he plied his trade in our football stadiums.

And why, because he stood up to all this ritual dehumanisa­tion with courage, dignity and brilliance, he is being mourned with such a huge amount of love and awe. The contributi­on that the first generation of black players made to football – and to British society – marks them down not merely as pioneers, but revolution­aries. And very special men. They killed racism as a mass participat­ion sport on our terraces by confrontin­g it with the force of their talent.

They were incredible role models to black youngsters, inspiring them to break into profession­al football in bigger and bigger numbers. Suddenly, to denigrate an opponent for his colour was deemed banal and counterpro­ductive because the majority of fans now had their own black heroes.

That very dodgy reason for mass racism disappeari­ng from earshot inside grounds hints at why it is still alive and festering below the surface today. I once asked a black player, who had bananas thrown at him, how he felt about being hailed as a pioneer and he replied that he didn’t break down racism.

He just helped to turn it down. He helped mute the noise.

But he had always worried how things may have turned out if those pioneers had not been very good players.

If they’d flopped, would they have played into the negative stereotype­s that surrounded black people, and made things worse by giving the racists more ammunition?

We’ll never know. Mainly because of men like Regis, Cunningham and Batson, Viv Anderson, Mark Walters, Luther Blissett and John Barnes. Men who stood up for themselves and their race and, in doing so, made their sport and country better places.

“Nothing hurt the racist cowards in the crowd more than seeing black guys like me scoring goals against their team,” wrote Regis, in his autobiogra­phy My Story.

Thank you for turning down the noise, Cyrille.

It’s still murmuring away under the surface. It still seeps out in the stands and social media, on pitches and in training grounds.

But football sounds a lot better these days because of men like you.

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