Arsenal’s first black player, Brendon Batson, made his debut on 11th March 1972 at Newcastle’s St James’ Park. We have the programme for the game and, as is often the case for debutants, Brendon’s name does not feature on the team sheet:
A little more surprising is that he doesn’t feature in the squad photo either:
Perhaps, on reflection, this isn’t such a surprise – Brendon had only just turned nineteen and was very much a fringe player at Arsenal. Breaking into a team that had won the double the previous season was never going to be easy.
There were almost 34,000 in the crowd that day and the reception Brendon received was hostile, Newcastle fans had a reputation for being among the most racist in the country at the time. Had manager Bertie Mee considered that this might happen? There are two schools of thought: he hadn’t thought about it and just selected Brendon on merit; or he had thought about it and decided to test the young man’s mettle. Certainly Brendon Batson survived the ordeal and, indeed, used the abuse to motivate himself:
“What do you do when you’ve got a bank of thousands of people shouting abuse at you … I’ll show them, I’ll show them. We said we aren’t going to let them drive us off, this is our flippin’ sport, this our profession, we’re going see you next week, we’re going to see you next month, we’re going to see you next year.”
And he did. Brendan chalked up over 400 appearances playing for Arsenal, Cambridge United and West Bromwich Albion.
Fast forward thirty years to 28th September 2002. We are now firmly in the era of the Premiership and it shows in the quality of the programme for the Leeds United vs Arsenal fixture on 28th September, a lavishly illustrated publication with 74 glossy pages printed in glorious technicolor.
Although the famous ‘Invincibles’ season lay in the future, Arsenal were nevertheless on a hot streak when they turned up at Elland Road, top of the League and unbeaten in their opening seven fixtures. Make that eight after their 4-1 win over Leeds.
This game made history in a different way as it was the first time ten, yes ten, black players appeared in the same team in a Football League fixture (nine in the starting eleven, Jermaine Pennant made it ten when he came on for Sylvain Wiltord in the 72nd minute). The nine starters were: Lauren, Cole, Vieira, Campbell, Wiltord (Pennant), Silva, Kanu, Henry and Toure. Only three, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell and Jermaine Pennant, were British born.
Leeds by way of contrast were on a downward trajectory that would see them relegated at the end of the following season. In fact Leeds were in such a precipitate decline that they started the 2007/08 campaign in League One. Chairman Peter Risdale’s programme notes hint at the problems that lay ahead:
“It is probably the right time to reflect on the financial results announced last Thursday … failure to qualify for the Champions League for the second year running, plus the cost of investment in the squad and associated interest costs, resulted in us posting record losses for the financial year ending 30 June 2002.”
In another point of contrast, the Leeds starting eleven against Arsenal included two black players, Olivier Dacourt and Lucas Radebe (and Michael Duberry came on as a second half substitute for Radebe).
You will have to go a long way to find a better example of how the face of English football has changed in little more than a generation. It seems unlikely that even pioneers like Brendon Batson could have anticipated how quickly their initial breakthrough would transform the game.