When does a player achieve ‘club legend’ status? Is being a ‘cult hero’ the same as being a ‘legend’?
Steve Johnson wasn’t a club legend (not at Wigan anyway. Maybe he was at Bury, where he had spent six seasons scoring 52 goals in 154 League appearances) when he stepped onto the pitch for Athletic’s home game against Sheffield United on 11th February 1984. But, scoring 23 goals in 61 appearances was a pretty good start and good enough to make him a fans’ favourite by the time he left in March 1985.
Steve was happy at Wigan and didn’t want to go, the fans didn’t want him to leave either but Wigan were in financial difficulties and the £40,000 fee they received from Bristol City helped keep the club afloat.
So, Steve’s Wigan career, lasted a little over a year – not long enough to achieve ‘hero’ or ‘legend’ status perhaps.
Only Wigan fans can decide how they describe Steve but we have no hesitation in describing him as a ‘Pioneer’ because his appearance against Sheffield United made him Wigan’s first black player.
Steve had only joined Wigan from Rochdale earlier in February and so it comes as little surprise that he isn’t named on the programme. Steve wore the No.9 shirt. As debuts go, it couldn’t have gone much better for Steve with goals either side of half time contributing to a 3-0 win.
Inevitably, we were intrigued by the black player on the programme’s cover photo taken from Wigan’s game against Leyton Orient at the end of January. Orient had two black players in their team that day, Kevin Godfrey and Mark McNeil. We aren’t quite sure which of them is pictured but, on a narrow vote, we reckon it was Mark McNeil – we are happy to be corrected.
Finally, Sheffield United were the very first team to field a black player in a Football League game, Arthur Wharton in February 1895, but their team photo for the 1983/84 season doesn’t include any black faces.
A photo of the current squad would include seven or eight black players, a sure indicator of how much the game (and society) has changed in the past thirty to forty years.