Laurie Cunningham made his debut for West Bromwich Albion on 12th March 1977, away at Tottenham Hotspur. I doubt many in the crowd of almost 29,000 would have been aware that Laurie had been on the books of Spurs’ bitter rivals, Arsenal, but they released him as they considered his time-keeping too haphazard. Big mistake!
You wouldn’t know it from the programme but this was the day West Bromwich Albion’s 1st team included a black player for the first time:
Laurie had signed for Albion from Leyton Orient on the 1st March and is not named on the programme. He actually played the full 90 minutes at White Hart Lane, replacing Allie Brown in the starting eleven. The fee of £110,000 Albion paid Orient was a hefty one in those days but would prove to be a shrewd investment, he delighted Baggies fans for two full seasons after this before moving to Real Madrid for a fee of a shade under £1 million.
There are many names in those line ups for Spurs and Baggies fans to savour but not a black player among them. But it would not be too long before Cyrille Regis and Brendan Batson lined up alongside Laurie (the so called ‘Three Degrees’ first played together on 4th March 1978 at Ipswich Town) as the face of football changed for ever in the late seventies and early eighties. The change was not popular with everyone at the time but most of us enjoy the rich diversity we see before us on match days now.
It didn’t take long for Laurie to become a favourite at the Hawthorns. Less than 10 months after his debut he featured on the cover of their programme:
How long does it take to become a ‘club legend’? Laurie only made 104 appearances for Albion but few Baggies fans would deny him legendary status.
Dave Bowler and Jes Bains, authors of ‘Samba in the Smethwick End’, don’t actually use the word legend but they do have this to say ‘there were days when you could look at this man and his utterly sublime gift and you would not have been surprised to see him wearing a Brazilian shirt with a No.10 on his back. He was that good, he really was.’
They also include a comment about his wider impact on the game ‘Cunningham has proved beyond any lingering doubt that the prejudices that lurked in the minds of so many British football coaches and managers can be assigned to history. He has liberated a whole generation of young blacks.’ They also say that ‘he proved that in football, as in life, the only thing that really matters is who you are, not what colour you are.’
And we can safely say that Laurie had quickly won a place in the heart of at least one Albion fan. In spite of having been at the club only a few months, supporter Dean Bartram, in this programme named Laurie in his Albion ‘Best of the Decade’ eleven.
Even now, over four decades later, I suspect Laurie Cunningham’s name would feature in a ‘Best of the last five decades’ line up of many Albion fans – as Bowler and Bains said, he was that good.