Football League clubs and their first black players
Three of the first black players featured in ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ were born on Barbados and at least another seven had Bajan heritage. Use our interactive map to find out their names:
https://footballs-black-pioneers.com/about/footballs-black-pioneers-where-were-they-born/
And read the book to discover their unique contributions to British footballing history!
Bill Hern certainly gets around, this week he was ‘in’ Brighton – not literally of course, Bill is a law abiding citizen! He spoke to Russell Guiver and David Townsend who run the Brighton Rock blog. Funnily enough Russell and David are Brighton fans. Brighton Rock has been described as “Probably the best podcast you will hear concerning Brighton fc. Very insightful, hosted by a presenter who is passionate about our club.”
It didn’t take long for the conversation to get round to a discussion of Brighton’s first black player and it soon became evident that Dave Busby (for it was he) had slipped under the radar of both Russell and David. This is precisely why we felt it was important to write ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ now before the contributions of players like Dave are completely lost to history.
You can listen to their wide-ranging discussion here:
Just got back from a couple of hours in Barbados (Zoom is a wonderful thing!) where I attended an event hosted by the museum in Bridgetown. On this Remembrance Day (11th November) it is fitting to remember Walter Tull, who lost his life in World War One. As you may know, Walter’s father was born in Barbados.
The museum is hosting an online exhibition about Walter and you can access it here: http://waltertullexhibition.org/
They hope that, Covid permitting, they will be able to make the exhibition a physical entity at some point during 2021. But, for now, why not take a virtual tour of the exhibits?
Covid-19 may have disrupted our plans for a grand national tour to launch ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ but it can’t stop us celebrating the book with an online event on Thursday 12th November. Why not join us? You can get your ticket here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/footballs-black-pioneers-tickets-127092114937
We will be joined by special guests Greg Foxsmith and Matt Tiller from the Jack Leslie campaign. Doors will open (in a strictly digital sense) from soon after 19.00 for a 19.30 start.
Bill Hern must feel like a regular now following another appearance on the Hawksbee & Jacobs show on Talksport radio:
You can buy ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ (“an important book” – Paul Hawksbee) from the publishers, Conker Editions, Amazon or, if you prefer, from your favourite local book shop.
Bill Hern took part in a three-way podcast between Accrington, Arizona and, neatly maintaining the alliteration, his home village of Aberford in Yorkshire, for ‘Across the Pitch’. The podcast covered a wide range of players including Gerry Clarke and Romy Boco of Accrington, Brendon Batson (Arsenal), Les Lawrence and Alf Charles (Burnley), Howard Gayle (Blackburn) and, of course, the great Jack Leslie plus a few others.
You can listen here: https://acrossthepitch.libsyn.com/episode-184-footballs-black-pioneers?tdest_id=1001309
And don’t forget that you can buy a copy of the book direct from the publishers: https://www.conkereditions.co.uk/product/footballs-black-pioneers-subscriber-copies-for-pre-order/. As Amazon have currently put their price up, buying from the publisher is a really good option as you will get a free A5 size commemorative poster as well as (hopefully) a signed copy of the book.
We debated long and hard whether we could include Bury in ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’, in the end the conclusion, reached with a heavy heart, was that we could not. In many ways the demise of the club, who joined the Football League in 1894, sums up much of what is wrong with football today. A club in financial difficulties, an ‘investor’ who failed to match actions to words and careless and unsympathetic administrators who failed in their duties. And so a club, established in 1885, went to the wall.
But a book is one thing, a blog quite another, here is the story of Bury’s first black player.
Stephen (Steve) Anthony Johnson was born in Liverpool on 23 June 1957. He went on to play for 6 League teams and in 1977, according to the extremely helpful contributors to the Bury FC Message Board, became the first Black player to appear for Bury.
Steve’s father, Eric Emmanuel Johnson, was a ship’s cook and baker in the merchant navy and his mother, Christina Johnson nee Murphy a coil winding machinist with a telephone maker. Eric’s father, William Johnson was also a merchant seaman whereas Christina’s father worked as a dock labourer. Steve was born in Mill Road Hospital, Everton, Liverpool and the family lived in Carlingford Street, Liverpool.
Originally a work house, Mill Road Hospital was hit by German bombs on 3 May 1941 killing at least 78 people. The Hospital was demolished in the 1990s.
Carlingford Street was in the Toxteth area of Liverpool where race riots took place in 1981. Toxteth had one of the highest unemployment rates in Britain and relations between mainly, but not exclusively, black people and the police were strained. Things came to a head on 3 July 1981 when the police arrested a black man called Leroy Alphonse Cooper in a, for those days, typically heavy-handed manner. Riots exploded across the area and gas grenades were used for the first time outside of Northern Ireland to quell the unrest. Nevertheless, it was 9 days before any semblance of peace was restored.
By 1981 Steve had already left Liverpool and signed for Bury in 1977. However, racism was rife in Britain of the 1970s and Bury was no exception. Indeed in 1977 the relatively newly-formed Rock Against Racism campaign group held a gig at Crystals Night Club in Bury featuring Ed Banger and The Nosebleeds (later to briefly feature Morrissey of The Smiths fame) and the poet John Cooper Clarke.
Rock Against Racism had been set up in 1976 largely in response to comments Eric Clapton had made at a concert in Birmingham declaring his support for Enoch Powell. Clapton thought there we too many foreigners and Black people in the country. Many in the music industry were appalled and responded with the creation of Rock Against Racism involving a series of concerts with an anti-racist theme.
Perhaps the highest profile event Rock Against Racism organised was in 1978 when 100,000 people marched from Trafalgar Square to the East End of London for an open-air festival at Victoria Park in Hackney and to show their opposition to the growing wave of racism in the United Kingdom. The need for the current Black Lives Matter campaign sadly suggests that things have not progressed as much as we would wish.
At 6 feet tall and weighing 12 stones 9lbs Steve was a powerful centre forward, strong in the air and known during his Chester days as the Mean Machine.
Steve had spells with Bangor City and Altrincham before joining 3rd Division Bury in November 1977.
He didn’t have long to wait for his debut appearing at inside right in a 2-1 defeat at Bradford City on 12 November 1977. Steve was substituted by the experienced Alan Suddick in that game and didn’t reappear until a 1-1 home draw with Colchester on 27 December 1977.
His first goal came along on 2 January 1978 – the 3rd in a 3-0 win at Rotherham.
Steve played 11 league games (2 as substitute) that season. He didn’t add to his goal at Rotherham. Bury finished the season in 15th position winning only one of their last 14 games and drawing an incredible 13 times in 23 home games.
Although Steve didn’t feature in any of the games, Bury reached the Quarter Final of the League Cup that year where they were beaten 3-0 at home by Nottingham Forest the eventual winners and reigning League Champions. A crowd of 21,500 watched the match. In contrast, the highest home crowd of the season in the League was only 9,783 and for Bury’s final home game of the season the crowd had fallen to 2,536.
The 1978/79 season was a huge disappointment for Steve. Even in a struggling Bury side he started only 3 league games plus 5 substitute appearances. He saw no first team action until coming on as substitute in a 1-0 home win against Hull City on 28 October 1978 and didn’t start a game until 27 March 1978 in a 1-0 home defeat against Swindon Town. His only goal came in Bury’s last away game of the season, a 4-0 win at Lincoln which all but banished Bury’s relegation worries. Bury finished in 19th position avoiding relegation by only 6 points (2 points for a win).
Still only 22 years old, Steve made his big breakthrough in the 1979/80 season, although he didn’t feature in the first 13 league games of the season. Bury were at that stage 2nd from bottom in the 3rd Division. After coming on as substitute in a 2-1 home defeat against Sheffield United, Steve started the next 8 games scoring 4 goals. He was one of four players dropped after an 8-0 defeat at Swindon Town on 8 December 1979 which seems a little harsh to say the least!
By the end of the 1979/80 season Steve had played 25 league games plus 2 as substitute scoring 9 goals making him second top scorer behind Craig Madden. He scored all 4 of Bury’s goals in their last 3 league games in the space of 7 days, earning them 4 points but it wasn’t enough to prevent them being relegated by a single point.
Steve made his FA Cup debut in 1979/80, a season in which Bury reached the 5th round before losing 2-0 at Liverpool in front of a crowd of 43,769. Steve played in that game as well as making 5 other FA Cup appearances (including 1 as substitute) scoring 2 goals. Bury held Liverpool for 64 minutes before Liverpool substitute David Fairclough broke the deadlock on 64 minutes. Fairclough added a second on 81 minutes and Bury’s brave effort was over.
By 1980/81 Steve was one of the first names on the team sheet. Bury found 4th Division football a little easier but could finish only 12th. Steve played 42 League games plus one as a substitute scoring 18 goals. He scored his first hat trick on 21 March 1981 in a 3-1 home win against local rivals Rochdale. He scored 6 penalties that season 2 of which came in his hat trick. Steve also 3 League Cup goals in 3 games, his 21 goals making him the joint 5th top scorer in Division 4. He also made 5 FA Cup appearances without scoring.
1981/82 was another good season for Steve who scored 13 goals in his first 20 League games although he didn’t score a single League goal in the 11 League games he played after 30 January 1982. His striking partner Craig Madden scored an incredible 35 goals but despite this prolific pairing Bury could finish only 9th in Division 4. Madden scored a further 7 goals in the FA and League Cup making him the top scorer in Division 4. Steve scored 2 FA Cup goals in 4 games and one League Cup goal in 2 games.
There was to be no repeat of Craig Madden and Steve’s scoring feats in 1982/83 but Bury did improve immensely, topping the League going into the New Year and being in the 4th promotion spot going into their last game of the season.
Bury could have all but clinched promotion with a win in their penultimate game of the season but only drew at Tranmere on 7 May 1983. All was far from lost and a win in the last game of the season at home to Wimbledon would be enough to see Bury back in Division 3. Wimbledon had already clinched the title and Bury’s highest gate of the season, some 6,760, were hoping to celebrate promotion. Wimbledon clearly didn’t sit back and relax, going 2-0 up by half time and eventually winning 3-1. Bury would still go up if Scunthorpe lost their last game at Chester. However, Scunthorpe won 2-1 and Bury having been in a promotion position since September missed out on promotion.
Bury had been 7 points ahead of Scunthorpe with only 2 games to play but crucially Scunthorpe still had to play 4 games. Bury gained only one point while Scunthorpe got 10.
Steve ended the season with 10 goals from 29 League games plus 5 as substitute. He also played one League Cup game but failed to score.
The Wimbledon game proved to be Steve’s last in a Bury shirt. In the close season he joined Division 4 side Rochdale where in 1983/84 he played 19 games including 2 as sub scoring 7 goals. He also played 1 League Cup game without scoring and scored 2 goals in his sole FA Cup appearance. Despite this decent strike rate Rochdale allowed Steve to join Division 3 Wigan Athletic in February 1984. Where, almost 7 years after becoming Bury’s first Black player, he gained the same distinction at Wigan.
Steve retired from the game in 1993. He made a total of 476 appearances for six Football League teams during his career, scoring a total of 150 goals.
There is a postscript to the story of Bury FC as a new club, Bury AFC, has risen from the ashes. The club, run by the fans, for the fans, has a place in the North West Counties League First Division North and, as their website proudly proclaims, they are ‘bringing football back to the town of Bury.’ Their opening league fixture ended in a 3-2 win against Steeton AFC and the long climb up the football pyramid had started.
Bury AFC’s first black player in the League? The honour goes jointly to Liam MacDevitt and Arthur Feudjio who both came on as substitutes in the 71st minute against Steeton.
We wish Bury AFC the best of luck for the future.
So much material is aired during Black History Month that it is easy to miss good things, the short film about Clyde Best that we feature here had slipped through our net. This does rather beg the question why black history only gets talked about for one month of the year, for us, the black contribution to British society (not just football) is something we should celebrate all year round.
Clyde was not the first black player at West Ham but it would have been impossible to write ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ without discussing his experiences.
We are so grateful to JeanMaire Symonds, daughter of Rochdale’s first black player, Calvin Symonds, for sharing this film with us. Clyde and Calvin both still live in Bermuda where their sporting contributions are remembered with pride.
We are proud that our book has received many positive reviews, you can read some of the comments here: https://www.conkereditions.co.uk/must-read-reviews/
As part of Black History Month celebrations, the Post Office have painted four of their post boxes in the UK black. Each one celebrates the contribution of a black person to British society. We can debate whether this is tokenism of the worst sort (four? In the whole of the UK?) or whether we should accept that even a token gesture is better than nothing. We can also debate whether the ‘right’ four people have been chosen to represent the contribution black people have been making in Britain for centuries. But let’s leave those questions aside for now and express our pleasure that one of ‘Football’s Back Pioneers’ is among the chosen four.
Walter Tull was the first black player at Tottenham Hotspur (his career there spanned the years 1909 to 1911) and Northampton Town (1911 to 1914) and, according to the press release that accompanied the story, he was also Glasgow Rangers’ first black player. As far as we know Walter never played a competitive game for Rangers but at least one source states that he signed for them in February 1917 whilst in Scotland on his officer training course with the intention of playing for them after the war. Regardless of his status as a Rangers player, what is beyond doubt is that Walter was an important figure not just as a footballer but also as a soldier.
Walter served in the Army from 1914 until his death in France in 1918. He was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant at a time when Army Regulations specifically excluded anyone with non-white heritage from holding an officer rank (Walter’s grandfather had been an enslaved man on Barbados). The powers that be had a range of excuses for discriminating against soldiers of black or mixed heritage, one was that white troops would object to being led by a black officer. It’s surely worth mentioning that a number of the men Walter commanded risked their lives trying to retrieve his body from no-man’s land where he fell. His body never was recovered and so he has no known final resting place, but he is commemorated on the war memorial at Arras, one of 34,785 men remembered there who have no known grave. He is also named on the memorial in his home town of Folkestone and on the one in nearby Dover. At Northampton Town’s ground his memory is honoured with the words:
“Through his actions, W. D. J. Tull ridiculed the barriers of ignorance that tried to deny people of colour equality with their contemporaries. His life stands testament to a determination to confront those people and those obstacles that sought to diminish him and the world in which he lived. It reveals a man, though rendered breathless in his prime, whose strong heart still beats loudly”
Walter Tull deserves to be remembered and we are glad that ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ is playing a small part in that.
The material in ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ is presented in alphabetical order by club (Accrington Stanley to Wycombe Wanderers). We did discuss presenting the stories in a different way, chronological order by date of debut. Had we done so the book would have opened with Arthur Wharton, who made his debut for Preston North End in 1886, and continued through to new arrivals in the League like Salford and Harrogate Town. This would have given the book a very different flavour, turning it much more explicitly into a book about 130+ years of the black British experience. There are stories within the book that reflect many aspects of that history.
Arthur Wharton was sent to England from his home in what is now Ghana by his middle class parents to be educated in British schools. Their hope was that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a Methodist minister. Sadly from their point of view his undoubted ability as a sportsman distracted him from the career path they had chosen for him and the rest is, well, history.
The second black player came from a very tough working class area of Scotland, Leith, where disease was rife. His father was from ‘West Indiea’ [sic]. John Walker was lucky to survive beyond childhood, many of his contemporaries didn’t, and he enjoyed a brief but successful career as a professional footballer. He died tragically young, succumbing, probably to tuberculosis, at the age of just 22.
Another black ‘pioneer’, Willie Clarke, was the grandson of a member of British Guiana’s (now Guyana) plantocracy. His father, Alexander Clarke, was sent to Britain to be educated, in this case, in Scotland. After featuring as the first black player at three clubs in the English Football League, Willie served in the Army during World War One, which he survived, dying at the age of 70 in Tunbridge Wells in 1949.
Walter Tull was another who would have featured in the early chapters of the book. Walter was the grandson of an enslaved man on Barbados. Walter’s father made his way to England where he settled in Folkestone and married a local white girl. Walter was the first black player at two clubs and also served as an officer in World War One. He was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant even though Army regulations at the time specifically excluded anyone who wasn’t white from being an officer.
So already in these four stories we have links to West Africa, two British colonies in the Caribbean (Guiana and Barbados) and the slums of working class Scotland. These stories alone demonstrate the diversity of British society that pre-dates the Windrush generation by up to 60 years.
Of course there are many other stories and the players featured in the book came from (i.e. were born in) at least fourteen different countries, the net is cast even wider if you take into account where players’ parents were born.
If you have already bought a copy of the book and would like to follow the stories chronologically you can download the timeline here:
If you haven’t yet got your copy the obvious question is why not?! The book can be bought from Amazon (the cheapest option), is available in some main branches of Waterstones (and can be ordered from any other branch) or, if you would like to support your local independent book shop, they can order you a copy. Finally, you can get the book from the publishers: https://www.conkereditions.co.uk/product/footballs-black-pioneers-subscriber-copies-for-pre-order/ – although you will pay the full price they do still have signed copies and they will also send you a free limited edition A5 size print to go with the book.
We started work on ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ in the autumn of 2016 and each May we mourned the loss of two teams from our contents’ list and started work on two new chapters. Sometimes work we had done that we feared was wasted effort turned out not to have been wasted after all – Leyton Orient were in, then they were out, then they were back in again. We kept our fingers crossed for Notts County in the 2020 play offs as we had already written about their first black player, Pedro Richards. Sadly it was not to be and so we set to work writing about Barrow and Harrogate Town instead. But, although a book has a finite number of pages, this blog is under no such constraints and so here is the story of Pedro Richards.
Pedro was born in the North Middlesex Hospital, Edmonton, London on 11th November 1956. His birth certificate shows his name as Peter Richards but, probably thanks to his Spanish mother, he is forever remembered as Pedro.
He spent his childhood up to the age of 11 in Spain and when he came to Nottingham as a young boy he could hardly speak English. Indeed in his book Diary of a Football Nobody, his team mate David McVay irreverently refers to “Pedro, whose grasp of the written English is on a par with his attempts at the spoken word…”
Early press reports about young Pedro almost invariably described him, incorrectly, as West Indian born.
As a young professional Pedro impressed greatly and in 1974 spent two days training at Lilleshall as one of the 50 top under-18 year old footballers in England.
He had played for Nottingham Boys along with St Kitts-born Tristan Benjamin who also joined Notts County. It was always going to be a close run race to see who would be the first to reach the first team. Pedro won that honour when he made his debut on 23rd November 1974 at left back in a 3-0 defeat at Sunderland who were flying high in the old Second Division at the time.
Despite the occasional transfer request, Pedro was a one-club man and over 12 seasons played almost 500 games for Notts County, scoring six goals.
Tragically he died, aged only 45, on 23rd December 2001.
Pedro is still fondly remembered by many County fans and it is our pleasure to honour him here.
Almost as soon as ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ had been sent out to our eager subscribers new information came to light about William Gibb Clarke. We would have loved to include it in the book but … too late. It’s what historians know by the technical term ‘sod’s law’.
Willie’s football career started in Scotland in 1895 and continued in England with Bristol Rovers (1900/01), Aston Villa (1901/02 to 1904/05), Bradford City (1905/06 to 1908/09) and Lincoln City (1909/10 to 1910/11), before he finished his career with non-league Croydon Common in 1911. He was the first black player at Bristol, Bradford and Aston Villa but not at Lincoln where John Walker preceded him.
Born in 1878, Willie was 33 in 1911. Football was nothing like as well paid in those days as it is now and there were few opportunities for players to set aside money for their post-football life and so they had to find a different line of work. The evidence suggests that Willie became an upholsterer – that’s the occupation shown on his 1914 marriage certificate.
But one thing looms very large in the second decade of the 20th Century and that, of course, is what we now know as the First World War. When war broke out, Willie was 36. There was no conscription when the War started, so young men like Willie were under no obligation to enlist. Many chose to sign up anyway and had a variety of motives for doing so. Patriotism would have been high up the list for many men, a yearning for adventure away from mundane lives in a factory or down a mine would have influenced others and, money, may have motivated some – the Army paid relatively well. At the time, the popular belief was that it would be ‘over by Christmas’ (but which Christmas?). If they had known what we know now how many would have enlisted anyway? A rhetorical question, we can never know the answer of course.
When we researched ‘Pioneers’ we suspected that Willie may have served in some capacity during the War but Clarke is, let’s face it, a common name and it was difficult to establish whether he did.
But then a descendent of Willie’s made contact on 10th September to say that a cousin had two medals from the First World War that he had inherited, they turned out to be Willie’s medals from the War.
The service records of many First World War soldiers were destroyed when a German bomb struck the building where the files were kept during the Second World War. Around two thirds of the records were either destroyed by fire or irreparably damaged by the water used to extinguish the flames. Whether a soldier’s records have survived is pretty much down to pot luck – Walter Tull’s records survive, those of Willie Clarke do not. But the cards recording what medals soldiers were entitled to were stored in a different place, most survive and they contain useful information. This is Willie’s medal card:
This tells us that Willie was among the first to enlist, 11th August 1914. He joined the Middlesex Regiment and was given the service number L/11025. It is tempting to think that he served in the Football Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment alongside Walter Tull but that unit wasn’t formed until December 1914 and Walter didn’t enlist until 21st of that month. Possibly they did serve together but in the absence of Willie’s service records it is almost impossible to prove that they did.
We know that Willie was straight into the action because the record shows that he was entitled to receive the 1914 Star, a medal awarded to those who saw active service in France or Belgium between 5 August and 22 November 1914. Willie could have been involved in the Battle of Mons (from 23rd August 1914), the Battle of the Marne (6th – 12th September 1914), and/or the First Battle of Ypres (19th October to 22nd November), or any one of many smaller confrontations. Willie was lucky to survive, many didn’t, after the War one estimate put British losses from 14 October to 30 November alone at 58,155.
Willie later transferred to the Royal Engineers where he was a sapper. Further research might yield more information about Willie’s war record but we already know that he received the full complement of British Medal, Victory medal and 1914 Star. Willie survived the War, dying in 1949 at the age of seventy.
As well as being a football pioneer William Gibb Clarke was clearly also a very brave man.
We are so proud that Viv Anderson agreed to write a foreword for ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’, as well as being a pioneer he is a true gentleman.
Sixty years ago, in September 1960, Tony Collins became the first black manager of an English Football League club when he took over the reins at Rochdale. His first game in charge was a 2-1 win at Carlisle; 5,262 fans were in Brunton Park that Tuesday evening although it is unlikely many realised they were witnessing history being made.
We have had the privilege of putting some questions to Tony and share his answers with you here.
Tony was coming towards the end of his playing career when he signed for Rochdale from Crystal Palace in the summer of 1959. In the 1959/60 season he played 37 League and Cup games for Rochdale, scoring four goals. In all but one of the games he wore the No.11 shirt which in those days meant that he was played on the left wing, his favoured position.
As the 1960/61 season got under way the manager, Jack Marshall, moved the short distance to take over at Blackburn Rovers. Blackburn were in the 1st Division (equivalent of the Premier League today) while Rochdale languished in Division Four (now League Two) so this was a massive step up for Jack; he must have done a decent job as he remained in charge there until February 1967.
This left Rochdale with a vacancy to fill. Tony remembers that “Jack Marshall told me to put in for the job at Rochdale” which he duly did. Rochdale’s owner, Freddy Radcliffe, who later revealed that there were 30 applicants to choose from, was aware that appointing Tony might be controversial, after all, the League had been running since 1888 and there had never been a black manager at any of the clubs. Radcliffe, speaking about appointing “a coloured boy” as manager is quoted as saying “we were aware that eyebrows might be raised because of his colour. But that makes no difference, and we sincerely hope that it will make no difference in his career as manager.”
So, as we contemplate the ongoing dearth of black managers in the English game, how did Tony come to get the job?
We started by asking Tony which managers he had played for during his career who he particularly looked up to or admired or who had perhaps encouraged him to consider going into management himself? Tony cited Eric Webber, who he played for during his spell with Torquay United “we used to have chats about the game and strategies, this lead to me thinking about coaching and possibly management.” He went on to add that “I also had a great relationship with Cyril Spiers,” Spiers was manager of Crystal Palace during Tony’s time there, “and of course Jack Marshall.”
Rochdale were the epitome of ‘unfashionable’ and during Tony’s seven+ seasons in charge at Spotland the highest they finished was 6th (in 1964/65) and they had to apply for re-election three times after finishing in the bottom four. This may not sound all that impressive but Tony’s record was on a par with what other managers had achieved at Spotland. He was managing on a shoestring budget and his best players were regularly sold to balance the books.
What very much exceeded expectations was that in 1962 Tony took Rochdale to the final of the League Cup. Although they lost the final over two legs to 2nd Division Norwich, they remained the only club from the bottom tier of the League to reach the final of a major cup competition until Bradford achieved it in 2013.
Tony chose to leave Rochdale in 1967 as he felt he had taken them as far as he could. Not unreasonably, he hoped for offers from elsewhere, “I always wanted another club of my own,” he said “I had applied for many jobs towards the end of my time at Rochdale and afterwards. People knew with my track record at Rochdale that I was a good judge of a player and we won games we shouldn’t have done and that came down to tactics and stopping better teams play through my analysis.” Tony applied to many clubs: Watford, Rotherham, Peterborough, Macclesfield, Chester, Darlington and Stockport County among them, but no offers materialised. Tony’s daughter, Sarita, feels that the colour of Tony’s skin counted against him but he himself has never been one to play the race card.
We asked him how he felt about the lack of black managers in the game. “Its very difficult. Obviously you shouldn’t get the job or be ruled out because of the colour of your skin. The difficulty these days is getting the experience to get into a league club, with only 92 clubs available.” Tony went on to list the qualities and skills a manager needs: “you have to be a leader, were you a club captain, did you get the responsibilities on the pitch that go with that? Coach, man management skills, a great communicator, tactician, a businessman -dealing with members of the board who are professional business men – I went on a sales/business course. You need to be an excellent negotiator, these days the figures are so enormous, you have to work well under pressure, you have to have a team of backroom people around you who you can trust, have your back covered and who’s opinion you respect.” Although Tony made a smooth transition from player to manager (he was player/manager in his first season at Spotland), he commented that “these days to have been a great player isn’t enough.” Finally he added “you may have to make sacrifices in your family life, you never switch off, your time is not your own as it was as a player.”
Many of the players we spoke to in the course of researching ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ mentioned the Rooney rule and Tony did too. “The Rooney rule could be a good place to start. I was lucky the player’s wanted me to be the boss, and Jack wanted me to take over from him.” Player loyalty was clearly something Tony fostered as, when he announced he would be leaving Rochdale, the players petitioned the Board saying that they wanted him to stay.
Although Tony never managed another club he was a very successful assistant manager to Alan Dicks at Bristol City and his obvious ability was spotted by Don Revie who took him to be part of the backroom team at Leeds. Tony worked with Don Revie at Leeds and England and Ron Atkinson and Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, we asked him how they compared?
“I respect all of them – great managers, very different personalities, for me Don was number 1, great times and in my opinion we had a great team at Leeds, he had the whole camp set up right, it felt like a family right down to the person who made the tea, he was special.” The respect was clearly mutual, when Don Revie took up duties as manager of England he asked Tony to undertake scouting duties for him.
Tony was at Manchester United as Chief Scout from the back end of 1981. It was Ron Atkinson who brought him into the United set up “Tony is a real professional in this scouting business and is one of the most experienced in the game. i’m sure he will be a big help.” Tony had this to say about ‘Big Ron’ “I enjoyed my time at United with Ron, again we had a good team, people take notice of the persona they created of Ron but I’ll tell you he knew his stuff.”
After five years of 3rd or 4th place finishes, a poor start to the 1986/87 season saw the departure of Ron and a young man from Scotland was appointed. Although Tony is too diplomatic to say anything negative about Alex Ferguson (just plain ‘Alex’ in those days) you don’t get quite the same sense of warmth “Alex, I respect what he achieved at United, at the time I was with him at United he was under a lot of pressure and finding his feet – pleased for him as a professional that it worked out.”
If you read ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ you will find out about Tony’s role as the first black player at Crystal Palace, Norwich and Watford but we only had room to touch briefly on Tony’s achievement of being the first black manager of an English Football League club at Rochdale. As Viv Anderson comments in the foreword to our book, perhaps one day we will be able to write about the first black manager at each of the EFL clubs. Hopefully this article has given a more rounded picture of Tony’s achievements in the game. If your interest has been piqued you can read more about Tony and his relationship with Don Revie, Ron Atkinson and Alex Ferguson in ‘Tony Collins – Football Master Spy’ co-authored by Quentin Cope and Tony’s daughter Sarita. Tony was still at Leeds during Brian Clough’s brief, tumultuous spell in charge at Elland Road and the Cope/Collins book has more to say about that episode.
Buy ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ from Conker Editions and receive a signed copy of the book and a free limited edition A5 size poster https://www.conkereditions.co.uk/product/footballs-black-pioneers-subscriber-copies-for-pre-order/ Alternatively you can get the book through Amazon, Waterstones or any good bookshop.
Appearing on the Outside Write podcast gave us a rare opportunity to both speak about ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ as the interview was pre-recorded and then edited. Chris Lee has done a great job of stitching our contributions together so that it sounds seamless. You can listen here: https://outsidewrite.co.uk/podcast-black-pioneers-of-the-football-league/
We aren’t sure how we will go down with regular listeners to the podcast as a discussion of first black players in the EFL seems positively mainstream compared to some of the topics discussed, as you will see if you check out the link. If you have time to listen to some of the other interviews you may well be amazed by some of the stories that will definitely broaden your horizons!