It’s coaching apartheid
RICKY HILL ON RACISM
‘Alf Ramsey said I was talented but you might not want to go to war with me’
Ricky Hill removes his shades and declares himself ‘ not much of a storyteller’ before settling into a long and deep conversation with the same effortless rhythm which used to define his football.
He covers the ground, gets round his subjects with ease and style. Nostalgia or opinion, he can play off either foot. He has vision and the ability to strike from range.
Hill does not hide the scars of his relationship with Luton Town, where his legendary status is secure after 508 games and 65 goals. Nor strident views on opportunities for black coaches which he calls ‘coaching apartheid’.
Stories, in fact, tumble from a reluctant storyteller. Too many to cover here, but he is writing a book which promises to be brilliant and he stumbled across a possible title as he recalled his Luton debut.
‘Twenty-two minutes changed my life,’ said Hill. ‘We could call the book that. Those 22 minutes defined my career. There was no inkling i’d be involved. i was a first-year apprentice, a month after my 17th birthday. i hadn’t trained with the first team.
‘i was playing pool with the other apprentices when the coach stuck his head in and said, “you’re with the first team today”.’
Hill was the sub against Bristol Rovers, the penultimate game of the 1975-76 campaign.
‘it’s 1-1 and John Faulkner goes down injured. i stepped out and the crowd just gasped. They weren’t being racist, they were thinking, “Who is this?”’
Hill set up the second and scored the third. ‘ Not a bad way to introduce myself,’ he smiled.
‘A star is born. in the eyes of the fans, i mean. i did my jobs, cleaned the baths, and took the train home to my Mum’s in cricklewood.’
************** HiLL’S parents moved to England in 1955 from Jamaica and separated soon after he was born.
He was raised by his mother, named by his sister after teen idol Ricky Nelson and fell for football as a six-year-old seeing Leeds on TV in the 1965 FA cup final.
‘i saw someone who looked like me, standing in that white kit as they’re shaking hands,’ he said. ‘i asked my brother who it was and he said Leeds. i thought, that’s my team and it always was.
‘it was Albert Johanneson, the winger. i wanted to be him. Then came Pele and the 1966 World cup. i was so in love with football. i was a student of the game long before this age of information.’
When Leeds and Liverpool met in the 1974 charity Shield, Hill was selling programmes at Wembley.
‘i remember standing underneath the concourse, in a white coat with a satchel and the pennies brimming over and all these supporters were coming towards me, many of them drunk. i thought i was going to get robbed, but i didn’t have any trouble and once the game started i sneaked up to the top for a look.’
His only start for England came
at Wembley, against West Germany, aged 23 and earning £250 a week. it was the one time his mother, Doris, now 94, saw him play.
‘She did three jobs and was so busy,’ said Hill. ‘She is proof that hard work never killed anyone because no one worked harder to bring up three children.
‘My full debut was probably the proudest moment of my career. Three lions on my chest. it was what i wanted to do and the occasion didn’t overawe me.
‘Mum was there and my brother and mates from Learie constantine, the West indian community club named after the cricketer, where my brother and his friends — who didn’t get the chance to mix properly even within the non-League circuit — formed a club.
‘They played on Saturdays and i grew up idolising those guys. Greshford Jones, who went to chelsea and Sheffield United as a kid, was the closest thing i’d seen to Pele, and Webster Johnson was an England schoolboys trialist.
‘They were my mentors and i’d aspire to be as good as them, but i saw they never had a pathway.’
Hill seized his chance when spotted by Luton in a schools game at Hitchin and embraced his role as a trailblazer, coaching young players at Learie constantine as soon as he made the first team.
He was the fourth black footballer to represent England at senior level — following Viv Anderson, Laurie cunningham and cyrille Regis — at the vanguard of a generation who faced down bigotry on the terraces.
‘it could be a lonely place,’ he said, recalling ‘ sadness’ and ‘helplessness’ in the eyes of his team-mates when the monkey noises and vile chants registered.
Speaking on the day England’s black players were targets for racist abuse in Montenegro, Hill added: ‘i’m saddened we still have to be teaching people to conduct themselves in a proper manner regardless of race.
‘i’ve always thought it’s something that should be taught at home first. But it seems to be rising again, not only in football, it’s about humanity.’
Within the game itself, Hill has
often detected entrenched racism allowed to pass unchallenged, evident in Sir Alf Ramsey’s verdict on England’s options at the World Cup in 1986.
‘He said I was a talented player but you might not want to go to war with me. I thought, “You won the World Cup but you don’t know me and you don’t know what I’ve been through to get here”. It was hurtful and no one disputed the inference. I’ve had it all my life, doubts and stereotypes.
‘The word was black players didn’t have the acumen to play in central midfield, where I played. Ron Noades (the Crystal Palace chairman) said he signed black players for flair and speed, but needed white players around to add brains.
‘It was allowed to permeate. No one attempted to dispel the notion. Even the abuse we suffered early in our careers, very little of it was ever mentioned in the press at the time about the abhorrent behaviour of certain fans.’
Hill has had three opportunities to coach in England in nearly 30 years since he retired as a player.
He devised a version of the NFL’s Rooney Rule for English football to ensure black, Asian or minority ethnic candidates were interviewed, but rejects the Football League’s voluntary recruitment code as a ‘paper tiger’.
‘I know I’m a good coach but it was always going to be hard,’ said Hill. ‘I was a first-generation black player and I’m a first-generation black coach. From my generation, only Chris Hughton is working professionally at the top.
‘Whether that’s down to race or circumstance or networking is hard to say. But the facts are the facts. And if you’re not prepared to put something in place that might change the demographic within an organisation that goes out around the world, then you’re complicit in what I call coaching apartheid.’
Of his three opportunities, two came on the recommendation of his former Luton boss David Pleat, coaching youth teams at Sheffield Wednesday and Tottenham.
The other as manager of Luton himself in 2000, a dream which turned sour inside four months. ‘In my heart of hearts I knew Luton was my best chance,’ said Hill. ‘If I couldn’t get a fair chance there, I was never going to get it. I knew to be dismissed from my home club after only four months would have major ramifications and my fears have been realised.
‘In nearly 20 years since I’ve never had another opportunity in England. Not as a coach or manager or non-League coach. And I’m not sitting here idly. I’m all about work. I’m a young 60, I’m not ready to be carted off to the retirement home.’
Hill spent two years at San Juan Jabloteh in Trinidad and Tobago, where he reached the CONCACAF Champions League, and returned to the USA to win the NASL title with Tampa Bay Rowdies, where he had been player-coach in 1992.
The only sniff of a job on home shores was at Manchester United, where an interview with Sir Alex Ferguson went well but the job as reserve-team coach went to Ricky Sbragia.
LUTON’S rise to the top of League One with Mick Harford at the helm, and the green light for a new stadium, has the town buzzing about its football and evoking memories of Pleat, promotion and a decade in the top flight from 1981-82 to 1991-92.
There were two League Cup finals — one won and one lost — defeat in the Simod Cup final at Wembley, relegation escapes and two FA Cup semi-finals.
Hill can often be found at the club with friends or chatting to fans in the community, although his affection for Luton is offset by his treatment, not only as manager but when he left for Le Havre after 15 years as a player.
‘David Pleat would say every time Bobby Robson saw him, he would put an arm around David and say, “When are you going to sell me your boy Hill?” That was when Ipswich were winning trophies with (Frans) Thijssen and (Arnold) Muhren in midfield.’
There was a call from Newcastle boss Arthur Cox, Bill Nicholson tried to line him up for Spurs when they feared they would lose Glenn Hoddle. Gerard Houllier wanted him at Paris Saint- Germain. Atletico Madrid came in for him.
‘I never chased a dollar, never thought the grass might be greener,’ said Hill, but when boss Ray Harford promised him a free transfer he set up a move to France only to find chairman David Evans demanding a fee of £115,000.
Evans refused to leave his office and greet the delegation from Le Havre and Hill settled the impasse by finding £ 50,000 of his own money to buy out his contract, waiving a £30,000 signing-on fee.
‘The deceit hurt,’ said Hill. ‘To do this to me after I’d given my best years to this club. If I’d been penniless I didn’t want to work for those people again.’
He is, nevertheless, delighted to see Luton emerge from the gloom of three successive relegations and five years in non-League football.
‘I am elated for the fans,’ said Hill. ‘They’ve gone through so much and never deserted them and now it’s positive.
‘For them, I wish the club all the success possible and, who knows, maybe one day down the road I may play a part in the organisation in some capacity.’