Pitch Black (16 page)

Meanwhile at Davis’s club, under the management of George Graham, opportunities for black footballing talent continued to reap benefits, both on and off the field. Arsenal’s youth system continued to produce some outstanding black footballing talent. David Rocastle, Michael Thomas and Kevin Campbell had emerged from the system to supplement Davis as regular members of the first-team squad and had all been called up to the England under-21 set-up. In the most dramatic end to a league campaign in the competition’s history, for the second season in succession Liverpool missed out on winning the double. After beating city rivals Everton in a dramatic FA Cup final, they lost out on the league to Arsenal in that pulsating night at Anfield. Moments before Michael Thomas’s dramatic winner, John Barnes had an opportunity to whack the ball into the Kop, where no doubt it would have taken an age to be returned. Liverpool would have had a chance to regroup and regain their shape and would no doubt have seen out the final few seconds to claim the title and add to their FA Cup triumph. Barnes had cut in menacingly from the right wing and was seeking to get a shot on goal or make a chance for a teammate to slot the goal that would have left Arsenal two short and, in so doing, kill off their title challenge. Given the same circumstances again, Barnes would probably still have taken the same option as he did in those dying seconds, except that he would no doubt doubly ensure that he’d have beaten Richardson, who stole the ball from him. In the event, Richardson returned it to keeper John Lukic, who was able to quickly throw the ball out to Dixon, who’d pumped it forward to Smith, who’d turned the ball on to Thomas. A poke forward, a lucky ricochet, a quick shuffle of the feet, a toe poke and that forward roll and swallow-like
dive in iconic celebration heralded Arsenal’s first title in eighteen years.

The Hillsborough disaster represented the end of the 1980s in more ways than one. The game had received several warnings, but a combination of complacency and contempt had meant that those warnings had gone unheeded. The crush at the Leppings Lane end of the ground, resulting in the death of ninety-six Liverpool fans at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final, came after previous crushes in semi-final games at the ground, where tragedy had been avoided by the grace of God. What should have been a loud, wailing alarm bell to the authorities was instead treated as an opportunity for a collective lie-in, as the health, safety and well-being of fans were treated with thinly veiled contempt. The Popplewell Inquiry in the wake of the fire at Bradford City should have been the catalyst for wholesale improvements to football grounds, but by focusing solely on the specific and unique circumstances of the fire at Valley Parade, an opportunity to prioritise the well-being of supporters in general was missed by those with responsibility for leading the game. The Taylor Report into the causes of the Hillsborough disaster focused on two areas. The interim report into the causes of the disaster on the day concluded that police incompetency led to the deaths of the ninety-six. While this was broadly welcomed in so far as it absolved Liverpool supporters of blame for the disaster in the face of unprecedented media hostility from
The Sun
newspaper particularly, and other media outlets in general, it failed to hold other agencies to account, including the FA as organisers of the competition and selectors of Hillsborough as the venue for the game without adequate checks in place to ensure its suitability.

It was, however, the final report by Taylor that was to
have the biggest impact on the game in England and, by extension, on the fortunes of black footballers. The immediate impact of Taylor was to remove perimeter fencing at football grounds, but its recommendation to bring in all-seater stadiums to clubs in the top two tiers of English football would have the impact of ushering in the Premier League, the explosion of money within the game, the development of football as a global game with a global presence and the recruitment to the UK of footballers from all four corners of the globe. All of this was to have a profound effect on the game and on the experiences of black footballers.

As Lord Justice Taylor was preparing his report into Hillsborough, on 15 July, just outside Madrid, a car driven by Laurie Cunningham crashed, tragically killing the West Brom and Real Madrid legend. He was just thirty-three years old. Although he was entering the twilight of his career and his electric change of pace no longer allowed him to glide effortlessly past defenders, he still had much to offer. He could have done a decent job for another season or two, but, more importantly, the game sorely missed the opportunity to honour one of its pioneers, to capture his experiences, to get his perspective on the abuse he suffered and the ongoing campaign for equality, to hear about his time with West Brom, England and Real Madrid and to understand how the most mild-mannered and gentle of men managed to become a member of the Crazy Gang.

In July 1990, UEFA had announced that English clubs were to be readmitted to European competition after the five-year ban in the wake of the Heysel disaster. Liverpool were forced to serve an additional year of the ban due to their fans’ involvement at Heysel. The lifting of the ban was dependent, however, upon the good behaviour of English fans at Italia ’90. During that year, John Barnes had once again won the Football Writers’ Association’s Footballer of the Year Award, the second occasion he had been honoured in this way, but undoubtedly his greatest achievement that season had been to pen and deliver the rap on the greatest football song ever, as ‘World in Motion’ provided the soundtrack to England’s campaign at that year’s World Cup.

As well as Barnes, Des Walker and Paul Parker were also selected for the squad. Barnes played in the group games and in the second round and quarter-final against Cameroon, but missed the epic semi-final against West Germany. Parker played in all but the opening group game and had provided the cross that led to Lineker’s equaliser against the Germans. Walker was to play in all England’s games, earning rave reviews in the process. His performances earned him a move to Serie A, to play under Sven-Göran Eriksson at Sampdoria. His time at Sampdoria somewhat derailed his career. At Forest he had played as a central defender in a back four and was required to do nothing but defend, needing only a rudimentary approach to distributing the ball. At Sampdoria, he was required to play on the left-hand side of a back three or at left-back. Here, his positional sense went awry and his poor distribution was horribly exposed. In addition, injury had dulled his greatest asset, his pace, and he was never quite the same imperious force he’d been in his first spell at Forest.
After a year he returned to England to join Sheffield Wednesday, with whom he stayed for eight seasons.

Besides Arsenal, other clubs were beginning to include significant numbers of black players as regular members of the team. For the 1990 FA Cup final between Crystal Palace and Manchester United, Palace fielded a record five black players in the side that lost to United after a replay. Mark Bright, Andy Gray, John Salako and Richard Shaw had started the game for Palace. The semi-fit Ian Wright had come off the bench to score twice for Palace, making him the first black player to score twice in a cup final since Mike Trebilcock of Everton had achieved that feat in the 1966 final against Sheffield Wednesday. The side had been promoted to the First Division via the play-offs in 1989 and their meteoric rise had been spearheaded by the Wright and Bright strike force. The side, including its black players, had performed brilliantly in the Second Division, where Wright and Bright in particular garnered a great deal of attention. They had continued to perform brilliantly again when they were promoted. They had reached a cup final and finished third in the First Division, the highest position in the club’s history. Therefore, club chairman Ron Noades should have been well placed to adequately assess the contribution of black players in his side. In an interview in a 1991 TV documentary,
Great Britain United
, Noades had suggested that black players had great skill and were great athletes but couldn’t read the game: they could only play with the ball in front of them and needed tough white players to get them through the winter. He added that ‘the black players at this club lend the side a lot of skill and flair, but you also need white players in there to balance things up and give the team some brains and some common sense’.

His opinions reflected the ideas that had confronted black players since the mid-1970s. The side would never have been so successful unless every player had performed brilliantly, from sunny Saturdays at Brighton in August to wild and wet January nights in Carlisle and Sunderland. Noades’s remarks did his players, both black and white, a great disservice. Soon after his comments, his side began to break up. Wright was transferred to Arsenal and Bright went to Sheffield Wednesday.

In August, the Premier League was launched at the start of the 1992/93 season. Although the league was launched amid razzmatazz and US-style marketing, at least outwardly, little had changed from its previous incarnation – but it wasn’t to last. It was soon to create a system of haves and have-nots within the professional game as the new broadcasting money turned the English top division into a global brand and began to attract players from across the world. Chapeltown-born Brian Deane scored the first ever Premier League goal for Sheffield United, in a 2–1 win over Manchester United.

Many sides now fielded a significant number of home-grown black players and as the development of a squad, rather than a team, began to increase in importance in the Premier League era, more black players got the opportunity to play in the top flight. Aston Villa under manager Ron Atkinson regularly fielded as many as seven black players: Ugo Ehiogu, Tony Daley, Earl Barrett, Cyrille Regis, Paul McGrath, Dwight Yorke and Dalian Atkinson appeared frequently and were supplemented occasionally by Brian Small and Martin Carruthers. At Wimbledon, Roger Joseph, Terry Phelan, Robbie Earle, Carlton Fairweather, Steve Anthrobus, Andy Clarke and John Fashanu were all members of the first-team squad. At Crystal Palace, Ian Wright, Mark
Bright, Eric Young, Bobby Bowry, Richard Shaw, Dean Gordon, Paul Mortimer, Stan Collymore, John Salako and Andy Gray were members of the 1991/92 squad. The sense of isolation that the earlier generation of black players faced was beginning to disappear as more and more sides featured black players on a regular basis. Some teams, like Everton and Blackburn, provided pockets of resistance to the multicultural new league, but by and large the numbers of black players in the leagues and at clubs began to change dressing room dynamics and engendered a new confidence amongst black players.

Michael Johnson began his career just prior to the Premier League era and had paid close attention to the mood and confidence of black players in the game. As more black players entered the game from home and abroad, and racist abuse from the terraces began to wane, it also began to diminish on the pitch. The culture of the game was changing. Whereas in previous years opponents would employ racist abuse as a legitimate part of trying to intimidate and rile an opponent in order to gain a psychological advantage, this strategy was becoming increasingly anachronistic. White players were growing up in multiracial teams throughout their formative years, within club youth structures and at grassroots level, and were less likely to resort to racist abuse. Additionally, the generation of black players entering the game were of a more confident and assertive breed altogether and were having an impact in the dressing room and on the pitch.

In previous eras, the culture within the dressing room had been set by the senior professionals. This often meant that they formed cliques that would protect their own interests and they would have the ear of the manager and chairman. At many clubs, for a young player to raise an issue with
the manager or chairman, they would often have to do so via the senior players. Besides this, the pay structure often reflected the seniority of the players. As more money flowed into the game, most of it went on players’ wages and, as players’ agents became more prevalent, the old pay structure’s link to seniority could no longer be maintained. As young men with large amounts of disposable income entered dressing rooms, the old cliques began to break down into something more fluid. The old divide between senior players and their younger counterparts began to break down. Friendship groups in dressing rooms could now be based on age, overseas status, language, music and other factors. Furthermore, players were more likely to move freely between dressing room groups, which reflected the more open and looser arrangements. Therefore, as Michael Johnson stated, ‘There was an area of the dressing room where black players would gather together. It was a cultural thing … you had an understanding you could talk … and one of them’s got cream … or hair products.’

As the confidence increased in using cocoa butter and body creams after washing, which, in previous eras, would very likely have been met with a disapproving, overly masculine reaction from senior players, now they would be freely shared around the dressing room. In addition to the use of skin and hair products, other forms of black cultural expression began to be asserted. In many dressing rooms, younger black players introduced and dictated music policy. With support from younger white players, the older players, managers and coaches who objected soon realised that this was a battle they were going to lose. Slowly but surely, the ‘ghetto blaster’ and, later, oversized headphones became ubiquitous dressing room accompaniments. With
the confidence that came with a more democratic atmosphere in the dressing room, it was inevitable that this would translate onto the pitch. English football grounds began to witness the widespread use of greetings and hand gestures that were popular within black communities. The grip, the touch and the high five were now being used amongst players as greetings before kick-off and in the aftermath of games that had produced a good result, as well as at strategic points in matches. They also appeared during goal celebrations, which were becoming increasingly elaborate and choreographed. Amongst black footballers, the bogle began to make an appearance on English football pitches. Bogling was a style of dance taken directly from dancehall culture and was employed by a number of black players to celebrate goals.