We have tried to collect programmes from the debut games of our Black Pioneers but tracking down the relevant programme is just the first step. Ideally our player’s name should be on the team sheet but buying over the internet means you can’t look inside so you have to just pay your money and hope for the best. It is a hit and miss affair, sometimes you are lucky, sometimes you strike out. With Winston White of Leicester City we have struck out not once but three times.
Winston made his debut on the 19th March 1977 in an away game at Stoke. Winston wore the No.7 shirt and a goal in the 89th by Frank Worthington secured a 1-0 win for Leicester. So far we haven’t been able to track down a programme from that game but we console ourselves with the thought that his name probably wouldn’t have been in it anyway, young debutants often aren’t named on the team sheet in the programme (Winston was eighteen at the time), indeed, Winston recalls that he himself was only told on the morning of the game that he would be playing.
Sometimes newspaper archives can fill a gap and, in its 19th March edition, the Football Post reported:
the early pressure all came from Leicester and in the opening seconds Earle broke clear but Shilton comfortably saved the striker’s shot. The former City keeper was then called upon to save at the feet of Worthington before new boy White crossed with Shilton out of his goal but Worthington just failed to keep the ball in play.
The match, was described as ‘a big yawn’ by Bill Anderson reporting in the Leicester Mercury, but:
White stayed awake right until the last minute, to send over a telling cross to Worthington who yawned, stretched and coolly sent home a fine left foot shot past Shilton.
Young White deserved a better game for his first taste of big time soccer. His valuable cross near the end will make some sort of memory for him.
On 2nd April the Football Post made a further fleeting reference to Winston’s debut game:
the previous week Bloomfield [Leicester’s manager, Jimmy Bloomfield] brought in another reserve, Winston White, against Stoke and, although the young coloured lad came through reasonably well, he didn’t get a second chance to take over from the injured Weller.
Winston’s next game was away at Newcastle, a ground notoriously hostile to visiting Black players. Played on 9th April, the game ended 0-0. The newspaper archives are silent on this game apart from mentioning that Winston suffered a muscle strain which would cause him to miss the following game. If the experience of other Black players is anything to go by, Winston would have been given a tough time by the Geordies in the crowd of 32,300.
He was side lined until the game away to Tottenham Hotspur on 14th May. Winston tasted defeat for the first team in his League career at White Hart Lane as City went down 2-0 to goals from Jimmy Holmes and John Pratt.
His home debut, wearing the unfamiliar No.4 shirt, came the following Monday on 16th May. With hopes of a high finish long gone, a crowd of just 13,642 witnessed the occasion. It was a disappointing night as a Frank Gray goal secured the points for the visitors.
The only mention of Winston in these programmes is in the Leicester City programme which includes him in the list of second team appearances (29) and goal scorers (6). He isn’t in the team photo used by Tottenham and Newcastle as this would have been taken at the very start of the season before Winston had broken into the squad.
Winston only made twelve first team appearances for Leicester but, in a career that spanned three decades, he went on to make over six hundred League and Cup appearances including lengthy spells at Hereford United, Bury and Colchester United. No doubt his name appeared in many programmes, just not the three that we bought!
One additional appearance that isn’t among those officially recorded came in a testimonial game for West Bromwich Albion stalwart Len Cantello. Winston was asked to play in the ‘Blacks vs Whites’ game that has attracted a fair bit of media attention over the years. Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis were pulling together the Black team and Winston accepted ‘in a heartbeat’ when he was asked to play. The Black team won 3-2. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37924448
Winston was in relaxed mood as he looked back on his career when he met Bill Hern, co-author of Football’s Black Pioneers, while we were researching the book:
References
| ↑1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37924448 |
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