BATSON’S ALL SET FOR CHINA RETURN
BRENDON Batson was at West Brom with his grandson for a game. The new owner of the club, Guochuan Lai, kept looking at Batson.
“They were there, the new owners, it was their first game,” recalls Batson.
“One of them kept staring at me. The female interpreter introduced me. He kept on staring.
“He got the match day programme and in it there was a picture of us from the China trip - Cyrille (Regis), myself.
“And he’s pointing at the picture and I’m saying ‘Yes. It’s me. The hair’s gone from those days!’” The story goes that Guochuan Lai was at a match when West Bromwich Albion made their memorable trip to China in 1978.
But as that was 40 years ago and Lai is believed to be only around 45, if he was there he is unlikely to remember too much about it.
Even if Batson did have a memorable Afro back in the day.
“The story is that Mr Lai is from a region in Canton and he was at our game there,”says Batson.
“The players there were a bit bigger than others we came up against and they wired into us a bit. I saw our centre-half, Ally Rob (Alistair Robertson), his eyes lit up at that. It was ‘game on’.”
It’s actually thought that it was Lai’s uncle who was at the game not him and the difference has been lost in translation, but, whatever the true history, it is that link that caused billionaire Lai to follow the club and then buy West Brom for £200m just over two years ago.
Now Batson, the former Albion player from one of the golden ages of the club and after that elevated to West Brom’s managing director, is going back to China to walk the Great Wall and raise money for charity.
To add tears to the trip, Julia Regis, wife of Batson’s great friend and team-mate Cyrille, who was due to be back in China but died in January, is also walking the Wall.
Money raised goes to West Bromwich Albion’s Foundation and the Cyrille Regis Legacy Trust.
“It’s a big leap from us playing that game in China that brought us to the attention of Mr Lai to him now owning the club,” adds Batson.
“I don’t know his age - but he looks about 10. I said to him ‘what are you eating to look it so young?’.
“What’s happened from us going to China in 1978 to the club now in Chinese ownership mirrors the way the country has gone.
“I’m not aware that football was at all big when we went out there. For one of our games there were 90,000 in the stadium but it was odd because they'd been told to be quiet, you could hear a pin drop, because it was considered rude then to be boisterous or loud.
Quiet
“The country has moved on in a rapid way. What is it, second largest economy? A world power. It’s all happened in a short time.”
That thought takes Batson back to China ’78 when West Brom became the first English football club to travel inside the country as it emerged from isolation.
Now any footballer in the world with half a reputation can play in China and earn fortunes.
The country has become one of the world’s
power-houses, but back then it was blue uniforms and thousands of bikes that dominated.
“There were massive highways in the towns from where people worked,” recalls Batson.
“I think we heard this klaxon and then all these people came out, all in greys and blues, all in the same dress and on bicycles.
“They just flooded past us. I thought ‘crikey, I wish I’d got shares in the company making these bikes!’”
Guochuan Lai invited Robertson out to China for the 40th anniversary of the West Brom trip and there was a British Embassy event in Beijing where veterans from the Chinese teams who played Albion were also invited.
Palm, one of Lai’s companies, used the event to open a new children and teenage charity and which Albion now help promote.
Lai will be among the sponsors and, business permitting, will be at the Wall to support Batson and Co. on their return. Up to now, Batson has been back to China just once and was staggered by the changes, from austere of 40 years ago to the five star of now.
“My first look at the new China was seeing luxury car dealerships,” he says. “When we were there in ’78 all we saw were those bicycles. The change has been quite astronomical.
“I’d been told how it had changed and seen it on TV of course, but in my mind I couldn’t quite conjure up what I was being told against what I’d experienced.”
When West Brom were there in 1978 they ended up with two distinct players’ groups at meal times.
There was the European table where food was served to the players as familiar to them as the Chinese could get it - and then there was the Chinese food-only table.
“Some of the lads would not touch the Chinese food - they were the players on the European table,” says Batson. “I say you should try everything. But you are looking at black duck eggs and your mind is telling you ‘I ain’t quite sure about this’.”
It was a Bushtucker Trial before they’d been invented by Ant and Dec.
“One thing was that I learned to use chopsticks properly. If you could pick up their oily peanuts then you’d got the hang of it,” he said.
“I still can’t do it like a native but I practised and practised. I was at a Chinese restaurant the other night so it still comes in very useful!
“But we were at banquets that ran to 30 dishes. After you got to dish 10, it got to be a bit more challenging.”
What Guochuan Lia makes of the local West Brom delicacy, Balti pie, has yet to be discovered. Batson, now 65, is facing a 50mile trek along the Great Wall. It’s going to take five days from October 10 with 21 walkers so far signed up. Easy it won’t be. In places the Wall is not maintained well and there are steep climbs on a winding, crumbling path of over 10,000 steps along the Yan Mountains, either side of the Gubeikou Gateway. Batson was coming back from London and waiting for a train the other day and got talking. “I said I was doing the Great Wall and this chap says ‘Done that’. He looked as fit as a butcher’s dog this bloke, does a lot of these challenges, runs across the desert, the Grand Canyon, so I’m asking him about footwear. “He says to me the boots I’ve got will be OK but to get some Merino socks. I thought it was a brand of sock, but apparently it’s a wool and it doesn’t hold any sweat so you don’t get blisters. So I’ve got to get a pair of those before I fly out.
“I didn’t know that trip in 1978 would be something I’d still be talking about 40 years later.
“But I think we realised it was something historic when we had a meeting with the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, and learned it was all about expanding trade.
“There was a sense of being ground-breakers. We got the sense that we were ambassadors for the UK.
“You had to be on your Ps and Qs, this wasn’t an end of season football trip where you were going to go out on the lash, maybe wreck a few chairs or what have you.
“We were representing our club, yes, but beyond your club as well.
“Now I’m back raising money for my club’s charity and looking forward to it very much.”
If you want to support the Great Wall Challenge, visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ jonathan-ward-china