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The signing of Laurie
Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis by West Bromwich Albion
marked the beginning of a new age in British football. The 1977-78
season was the first in which a leading English club fielded three
black players in the same team.
 'Our presence was a
radical statement,' recalls Regis. (Left) 'Here we were, playing
well and helping to break down serious barriers in the First
Division.'
Ron Atkinson was then manager of WBA and, with his usual flair
for publicity, he called them the Three Degrees, an affectionate if
predictable nickname. He arranged a photo-shoot with the real Three
Degrees, who were on tour in Britain at the time. The black American
singers wore WBA shirts while the players were in fur coats. Atkinson
later took the players to see the group perform at Birmingham's
premier chicken-in-the-basket nightspot, The Night Out.
In
truth, life for a black footballer in the mid-to-late Seventies was
anything but glamorous. Cunningham, Batson and Regis may have been
role models for young aspirational black footballers everywhere, but
their prominence meant that they were subject to unrelenting abuse
from the terraces - this, after all, was when the National Front were
openly recruiting outside grounds.' We would regularly have 10 to
15,000 people racially abusing us at every game,' recalls Regis. 'How
could I fight back? Through my talent. And when you've won the game
you can say: "That's my response".'
More seriously, there were death threats. Regis, on being selected
for the first time for the England squad, received a bullet through
the post, accompanied by the words, 'You'll get one of these through
your knees if you step on our Wembley turf.' During his time at
Leyton Orient, Cunningham (Right) had already had a knife thrown at
him during a game at Millwall.
Little was done to reprimand the fans; their behaviour was, in
effect, condoned by the sporting media, who seldom mentioned the
abuse, and by the authorities. Today, the Football Association has no
record of any committee established specially to discuss the issue of
racism, let alone one shaping policies to deal with it. Perhaps the
FA believed the tide of black British players entering the game would
retreat. But how could it when Cunningham, Regis and Batson were such
talented role models?
Not that the Three
Degrees were part of a brave experiment in racial harmony: each
player was signed by a different manager. Cunningham arrived first,
bought by Johnny Giles from Orient for £125,000 in March 1977. Within
a month he had become the first black player to represent
England
at Under-21 level. He lit up an emerging, if functional, West Brom
team that included volatile Scottish winger Willie Johnston, veteran
striker Tony Brown and a young Bryan Robson.
Regis joined during the summer of 1977. He cost £5,000 from
non-league Hayes; new manager Ronnie Allen paid for the transfer
himself, because the board were reluctant to gamble on a 'raw kid'.
'Pay me back when he makes it,' Allen said.
But he was gone by
Christmas to be replaced by Ron Atkinson, 'a brash 34 year old',
according to Regis, who brought Batson, (Left) his captain at former
club Cambridge United, with him to the Hawthorns early in 1978.
The Black Country was not an ideal location for such progressive
thinking. Just a decade earlier, a Tory, Peter Griffiths, had won the
working-class seat of Smethwick
with the slogan 'If you want a nigger
for a neighbour, vote Labour'.
Yet West Brom fans embraced the trio. 'Laurie was the epitome of
cool,' recalls former Birmingham sports reporter Bob Downing. 'He was
quick and seemed to ride the tackles. I've seen full-backs end up in
the cinder track around the ground when he dodged them.'
If Cunningham had pace, Regis's game was based on power and
strength. 'You could see the fear in goalkeepers' eyes when he was
lining one up,' says Downing. Regis scored a spectacular goal in his
first league game, against Middlesbrough. 'He received the ball in
the centre circle, couldn't see anyone else supporting him, so he
sprinted towards goal,' recalls broadcaster and Baggies fan Adrian
Goldberg. 'The Boro defence simply parted and he unleashed a shot
from 20 yards. He scored maybe three or four dozen goals like that in
his career.'
Full-back Batson, who would become one of the game's most senior
administrators through his work at the Professional Footballers
Association, was a more measured performer. 'He was good at getting
forward but was never caught out of position,' says Downing.
Ron Atkinson will always be synonymous with the Three Degrees. He
effectively marketed them and they, in turn, contributed to his early
success. What he admired most was, as he puts it, their terrific
attitude and enthusiasm. 'Anyway,' he adds, 'it's not what colour you
are, it is what you're like as a person that counts.'
In the season of 1977-78, West Brom reached an FA Cup semi-final and
qualified for the Uefa Cup. The following season they seemed destined
for the First Division title; they were top, in January, following a
series of impressive wins, and went unbeaten from October to
February. Playing with flamboyance and pace, they scored seven
against Coventry, had away wins at Arsenal, Wolves, Leeds and
Ipswich, as well as a stunning 5-3 win at Old Trafford.
Their progress was interrupted by the big winter freeze, which meant
that WBA played only four games in two months. After which, they had
to play 25 games in 64 days - far too many for a small club in a
period before squad rotations. Liverpool, who had under soil heating
at Anfield and a far deeper squad, went on a long winning run and
ended up as champions. West Brom finished, disappointed, in third
place.
The Three Degrees may not have won anything together, but their
influence cannot be exaggerated. 'At a time when far-right groups
were recruiting outside other grounds, going to the the Hawthorns was
more like being at a left-wing rally,' recalls Goldberg. 'The Three
Degrees raised the political consciousness of Albion supporters
everywhere.'
The trio broke up when Cunningham, after impressing hugely in both
legs of a Uefa cup tie against Valencia, left for Real Madrid in
1979, for a fee of £930,000. He was reported to have been
disillusioned with a weekly wage of £120 (£30 more than Regis) and by
the racism of English football culture.
Once in Spain, he suffered even more abuse, but, for two seasons, he
excelled: celebrated for his pace down the flank and swerving
corners, the Madrid fans called him the English Toreador and, less
flatteringly, 'El Negro'. Cunningham scored on his debut and helped
Madrid to a league and cup double in his first season.
A serious foot injury, sustained in training, diminished his pace
and his later days were spent as a journeyman at, among others,
Manchester United (under Atkinson again), Leicester City and
Wimbledon, where he won an FA Cup winners' medal in 1988. A year
later, Cunningham, back in Spain with Rayo Vallecano, died after his
car spun off the road and hit a tree on the outskirts of Madrid. His
death passed largely unreported in Britain; the BBC does not even
have a news archive report.
Regis still mourns his old friend today. 'We were like two peas in a
pod for two years,' he says. 'Laurie reached only 60 per cent of his
talent: what a player he would have been if he'd hit 80 or 90 per
cent. We made a big difference to the black kids in this country. We
cleared a path for those who came after us.'
Of Regis himself, Atkinson, who signed the striker again at Aston
Villa in the early Nineties, says: 'He was always the leader of the
pack. 'Fash, Wrighty, whoever - they would all come up to shake the
Big Man's hand. It was for what he had achieved in the game.'
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