Search: 'Cyrille Regis'

Glen Wilson reports on how you could have played in the last game at Belle Vue

At the final whistle in Brighton’s last game at the Goldstone Ground, in April 1997, the fans proceeded to do two things: invade the pitch and tear the place apart. Neither through malice nor a penchant for violence, but just simply in an effort to claim something of what they believed was theirs. Fans left clutching pieces of turf, seats or, in one fairly impressive case, the large clock from the ground’s south-east corner. It was, in its emotion and spontaneity, a fitting fans’ farewell.

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Ron Atkinson may be apologetic his infamous faux pas, but as David Stubbs writes, he isn't exactly convincing

“Whatever happened to forgiveness?” asked Ron Atkinson in plaintive response to a verbal pounding from Darcus Howe on Adrian Chiles’s documentary What Ron Said (BBC1, December 13). Howe was lambasting Atkinson for his infamous off-microphone outburst regarding Marcel Desailly, whom he dubbed “a fucking thick lazy nigger.” Howe suggested that Atkinson should be made to clean Rio Ferdinand’s boots for ten weeks, which Atkinson protested was “out of order”.

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Is ITV's former pundit an idiot, a racist, or both? Al Needham wonders whether that is what matters most about a pundit's fall from grace, or whether his fate tells us how far we have come and how far we have to go

In the end, after all the finger-pointing, hair-shirt wearing, editorials and think-pieces, the only truly shocking thing about what Ron Atkinson said was that, for pretty much the first time in his public life, he came out with a phrase that came frighteningly close to plain English. He didn’t describe Marcel Desailly as “totally nigmatic with his workrate, to be enocular”. He refrained from mentioning that the Chelsea defender had been “giving it big lips all game”. He didn’t even advocate giving minorities the full gun, or bunging them in the mixer.

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Chris Ramsey is a successful black English manager – but he's working in South Carolina, where Gavin Willacy found him bitter at his treatment in his homeland

Chris Ramsey spreads his arms out wide, palms up to the cloudless sky, and looks around him at the neat yellow stands of Blackbaud Stadium. “Just think about it,” he asks. “Where would I want to be? Here or Rochdale?” The coach of Charleston Battery, arguably the best club in America’s A-League (one level below the MLS), expects the answer to be “here”, in idyllic South Carolina, where the air rarely dips below 70 deg­rees. But challenge him and he admits he would love to be coaching back home in England. The pro­blem is, he’s black. “Being black has certainly been a stumbling block in my career,” he claims. “Put it this way, I’ve had obstacles to overcome that other coaches haven’t.”

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September 2001 marked the 20th anniversary of John Barnes's debut for Watford. We asked five other black players of the same generation to recall their problems with racism in the early part of their career and reflect on how things have changed since

Alex Williams
Debut for Man City: November 1979
Now: Football Community manager, Man City

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