ADRIAN CHILES
SHORT of an idea for a charity football match?
How about blacks v whites? Skin colour, that is – not the kit. Believe it or not, this actually took place, in front of a paying crowd, at West Bromwich Albion in 1979.
But how? What kind of world were we living in? I found some answers while making a BBC documentary about the bizarre game. Herman Ouseley, founder of the anti- racism group Kick It Out, told me a story that shows just how desperate things were back then.
He went to see West Brom and our three fantastic black players – Cyril le Regis , Brendon Batson and Laurie Cunningham – play at Chelsea. Bananas were thrown, monkey noises made, the N-word screamed. All while Herman, this young black man, cowered (his word) among them.
Herman says Laurie scored one brilliant goal and the abuse intensified. He scored another and it got worse. But then he heard one knucklehead say, “Mind you the n***** is f***ing good, isn’t he?”
Herman says: “It told you there was a stirring. That people, in spite of everything, recognised ability.”
Seen in that context, you start to understand why getting a black XI together might have felt like a positive and progressive move.
The match – no one seems to recall who came up with the idea – was a testimonial for Len Cantello. But this kind of thing had been going on all the time. As Cyrille Regis puts it, “in five-asides we used to have the Jocks and the blacks versus the English”.
As well as Cyrille, Laurie and Brendon, you’ll recognise the likes of George Berry, Bob Hazell, Garth Crooks and Remi Moses.
Brendon recalls: “There was never anybody who rang us up and said, ‘ do you realise the implication?’ Nothing at all.
“It was fun. In that dressing room it was just great fun.”
Think about it – these players had always been heavily outnumbered. For the first time, they had a dressing room of their own.
Even Albion fans weren’t without sin. George Berry recalls playing for Wolves at W West Brom: “I ’m marking Cyrille and all I can hear from this fan is, you black b b***** d, effing get back up the tree, you effing Golliwog. And I’m marking Cyrille Regis! I said to this bloke, ‘ Who are you talking to? Me or Cyrille?’ Cyrille just shook his head.”
Football, in its own atrocious way, pulled all the horrors of the era into appallingly sharp focus.
But at the same time, football was in the vanguard of lancing the boil of explicit racism and changing the nation for the better.
And the result? It finished 3-2 to the black team. So they did win, in more ways than one.
Whites vs Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation, is on BBC2 at 9pm tonight.
Football pulled the horrors of the era into appallingly sharp focus ADRIAN CHILES TV HOST AND FAN OF WEST BROM