On 21st October 1972 Reading hosted Southport at Elm Park. The game ended in a 1-1 draw, a seemingly mundane scoreline but a piece of history was made – we will come on to that in a moment.
On the same day I was at Selhurst Park with over 35,000 others watching my team, Crystal Palace, lose 3-2 to Arsenal. Twice behind, Palace equalised twice before conceding a third in the 75th minute. There were no black players on the pitch at Selhurst Park. Although Brendon Batson became Arsenal’s first black player in March 1972 he made only three appearances in the 1972/73 season and the game at Selhurst Park wasn’t one of them.
Before returning to the Reading game I was distracted by the games in the ‘half time scores’ feature in the Reading programme. There were twenty games listed, that’s forty teams and 480 players if you include those listed as substitutes. Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to how many of those players were black? This is 1972 remember, just fifty years ago.
Well, I don’t claim to know the name of every black player in the Football League in the 1970s but I spotted just six (1.25%). The six were: Clyde Best at West Ham; Bob Delgado, first black player at Carlisle United and playing No.2 for them at Leyton Orient; Ricky Heppolette of Preston North End, very probably the only player of Indian descent playing in the League that day; Steve Stacey playing for Exeter City, the last of the three clubs where he was the first black player (the others were Charlton and Ipswich); and, at Torquay, not one, but two black players – Mike Trebilcock (first black player at Everton) and Ces Podd, playing for visitors Bradford City.
Some other names I spotted were two future Crystal Palace managers, Neil Warnock playing for Hartlepool and Paul Hart, playing for Stockport County. The name of the Hereford County goalkeeper may also ring a bell, David Icke, who isn’t black but, some might say, may very possibly not even be humanoid (if you haven’t heard of him a quick google should enlighten you).
Anyway, returning to Reading, we must add Andy Alleyne to the list of black players above. Andy is not named in the programme, but first black players (or indeed any debutant) often aren’t.
Andy was born in Barbados in 1951, one of only three of the first black players we identified as having been born there (the others were Roland Butcher of Stevenage and Mickey Welch of Southend United). You can find out where all our pioneers were born from the maps here:
https://footballs-black-pioneers.com/footballs-black-pioneers-where-were-they-born/
The maps also show the heritage of our players (seven players had parents or grandparents from Barbados).
Andy actually scored on his debut when a speculative punt from the half way line slipped through goalkeeper Peter Gregson’s hands and ended up in the net. Andy scored just once more for Reading in his 48 appearances for them (but he was a full back so that is hardly surprising).
Andy’s Reading career was not a long one, he played his last game for them in August 1975. In May 1976 he was released by the club but, more happily, he married a fellow Bajan and they went on to have four children together. A happy ending? Sadly not, Andy was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and died two years later. He was a popular figure in Reading and over 1,000 people attended a memorial service in his honour. You can read the full story in our book Football’s Black Pioneers.
RIP Andy Alleyne, football pioneer.
