Three Wolves Legends Reunite to Honour Black Players in Film

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Three former Wolverhampton Wanderers footballers have reunited for a short YouTube film. It pays tribute to the contributions of Black players over the past 150 years.

George Berry, Don Gardner and Bob Hazell met at The Junction pub in Wolverhampton as part of Black History Month. Each played a significant role in the club's history. Gardner was Wolves' first Black senior player, Hazell its first Black goalscorer, and Berry the first Black player to lift a trophy for the club.

Abuse from the stands

Gardner, 71, first pulled on the gold and black shirt as a professional in 1973. The club has hailed him for "helping change Wolves forever for Black players". He said racism was something he faced "all the time".

"You'd be taking a throw-in and people would shout things at you from a few feet away," he said. He recalled that players such as Brendon Batson had bananas thrown onto the pitch, and that there were monkey chants. In his words, that happened regularly in football in that era.

"I never looked at it through the lens of colour," Gardner said. "I didn't think of myself as a Black footballer, I thought of myself as a footballer who wanted to succeed."

Berry said: "If you're the only Black face on the pitch and thousands of people are shouting abuse, that's hard." He joined the club in 1973 as an apprentice. He said the worst of it never came from teammates but from supporters and opponents. There were, he said, two choices: let it crush you or use it as motivation.

At Molineux, Berry reached the FA Youth Cup final and became a first-team regular. He was voted Players' Player of the Year in 1979. The following season he helped Wolves lift the League Cup, their last major domestic title to date.

Hazell scored his first goal for the club against Manchester City in March 1978. Some of what happened to him, he said, he never told his family, because they would have told him to forget football and come home. "But I needed football," he said. He added that camaraderie among his fellow players helped him keep going.

"I remember things happening in matches where teammates would immediately step in and stand up for me," Hazell said. Years later, he said, he would mention those moments to them and they often had forgotten all about it.

Berry added: "Not only the Black players, but all players who have had an influence on the club deserve recognition."

Source: BBC News