Racist Everton?

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Lucky Toma

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Just when I thought I was out...they pulled me bac
Writing an article for my website about Everton not having any black footballers during the 1980s and early 90s(?)

My website is a daft fake-newspaper so in-depth facts are not required.

I do however want to get the basics correct so I was wondering if anyone knew for what period did the club not have any black players on their books. I just recall it being a long time and that it looked very suspicious indeed.
 
everton were definitely the last top division club to have no black players in their side. i can't remember who or when their first black player was but their fans showed their lack of class when, as i recall, they chanted 'n*ggerpool' during a derby game shortly after john barnes signed for liverpool.
 
I'm sure they went a very long time as the only top division side to have no black players. It was years after everyone else. They still don't have loads compared to other prem squads.
 
If you google it, there's loads of stuff like this. Personally, I always believed there was something in it but not so much these days.


<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/jan/07/race.world" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/jan/07/race.world</a>


Paul Brown and Vivek Chaudhary
The Guardian, Friday 7 January 2000 17.04 GMT
Article history
Racial abuse aimed at black or foreign players at football grounds is still rife, according to university researchers who carried out a survey of 33,000 fans.
Fans from Everton, Rangers and Celtic topped the league table for making the largest number of racist comments heard, the survey found.

Arsenal, Charlton Athletic and Wimbledon won praise for reducing racism through campaigns inside their grounds, but according to Sean Perkins, of the Sir Norman Chester centre for football research at Leicester university, racism overall has remained much the same since the last survey, in the 1996-97 season.

The research covered the four divisions of the English football league plus Rangers and Celtic, but only last year's Premier league teams and Scotland's two leading clubs were ranked in a "league table of shame".

Fans were asked: "Have you witnessed racism aimed at players this season (1998-99)." The percentages of fans who heard racist abuse were: at Everton 38%, at Rangers 36%, at Celtic 33%, at West Ham 32% and at Newcastle by 31%. Best in the ranking were Wimbledon on 11%, Charlton on 12%, Derby on 14%, and Southampton and Arsenal on 16%.

Everton fans became notorious in the 1980s for singling out the black footballer John Barnes, who played for Liverpool, during his first appearance in a Merseyside derby, when scores of bananas were thrown on to the pitch. The club was also one of the last in the country to have a black player in the team.
 
de niro said:
nothing to see here.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to start any big debate or accusing the club of being racist myself De Niro. I'm just asking for any general info concerning the period in Everton's recent history when people were insinuating the club was racist.

Maybe the title is a bit incenditary, unintentionally so. I'm currently multi-tabling several poker games online and I couldnt think how else to briefly sum up what the topic was about.

No need for anyone to get their knickers in a twist.

I'm just wondering if anyone knows who the first black player was to play for Everton in the 90s(?) after a few years of them not having a black player. So I can name-check him in my article.

Thats all.

If anyone knows I'd be really grateful. If not, no worries.

ps - Cheers Pam (just seen your reply). I tried Googling it myself and just found loads of Yahoo Answer type pages where the responses are just basically taking the piss.
 
citykev28 said:
i'm quite sure it was daniel amokachi. i remember this period of everton's history. there was a certain 'pride' amongst an element of their support.
Click to expand...

He was my thought too. Cheers Kev. If no-one else replies I reckon I'll go with him. Its not crucial I get the right man I guess. I'm only small-time, not the Daily Mirror or anything (see other thread on here haha)
 
at the time it was widely suspected (rightly or wrongly) that everton's apparent reluctance to sign black players was official board policy.

thinking back, mike trebilcock who scored 2 goals for everton in the 1966 fa cup final was mixed race. he was a reserve signed from plymouth (i think) & was a surprise choice to play. his performance was a flash in the pan & he didn't stay there much longer.
 
rassclot said:
everton were definitely the last top division club to have no black players in their side. i can't remember who or when their first black player was but their fans showed their lack of class when, as i recall, they chanted 'n*ggerpool' during a derby game shortly after john barnes signed for liverpool.
Click to expand...

And when Barnes signed for Liverpool, the writing on the Anfield wall was ''better dead than a ****** in red''.
The city was one of the slave trades important ports (as was Bristol) so I'd hardly single out 'just' Everton fans / club in their hostility towards black players
 
Cheers Rassclot.

I think, sadly, when it comes to the fans no club has a clean record when it comes to racial abuse, particularly twenty years ago and more.

My story concentrates though on Everton's supposed (I'm assuming bullshit) 'policy' of not signing black players for a period during the 1980s/early 90s.
 
The ex Charlton striker Gary Nelson (who is an Evertonian and now works for the PFA) makes reference to some sort of discriminatory policy at Everton in his book 'Left Foot Forward'. No idea if there is any truth in it though.
 
Just finished writing the story now. Still playing poker at the same time so the quality probably isnt that great.
Will appear in tomorrow's Daisy Cutter.

1980’S GOODISON PARK WAS INSPIRATION FOR MIDSOMER MURDERS VILLAGE REVEALS SOURCE

A former member of the Everton board of directors – who wishes to remain anonymous – has revealed exclusively to the Cutter that Goodison Park during the 1980s was the real-life inspiration behind the fictional village of Causton, the idyllic yet strangely bloodthirsty, setting for ITV drama Midsomer Murders.

Our source disclosed to us the shocking revelation that the executive-producer from the hit shot, Brian True-May, who is in a great deal of bother this week following an interview he conducted with the Radio Times in which he aired views shared by millions of racists all over the country, used to be a season-ticker holder at the club and wielded some considerable influence within the corridors of power.

‘Although he had no official role here…I don’t even think he owned any shares….I remember Brian quite well as he could often be seen in the boardroom, bending the ears of the chairman and our then chief-exec. He always seemed to have quite a bee in his bonnet about us signing black players, or as he called them, ‘Slough boys’ and was thoroughly resistant to the idea. I distinctly recall him saying one time, with no small amount of pride, that Everton was ‘the last bastion of Englishness’ in Division One’.

‘On another occasion we were in tentative talks with Southampton about signing two of the Wallace brothers. When Brian got wind of it he went almost puce with rage at the mere thought. ‘It wouldn’t be an English club with them. It just wouldn’t work,’ he ranted to anyone daft enough to listen.’

‘He stopped coming to games around 1994, shortly after we brought in Daniel Amokachi, and I haven’t seen or heard of him since until I picked up the Radio Times last Monday. There in print was basically a rehashing of all his sayings. Same old Brian, still peddling his maidens and warm beer nonsense. Have you ever seen the show? Its like spending two hours inside John Major’s head!’

We investigated our source’s claims by watching a few episodes of the ponderous, yet bafflingly popular, programme and discovered some startling connections to the Merseyside club that suggest he is indeed correct.
In one episode the guy from Bergerac is clearly shown holding up an EFC mug, whilst in another the storyline centres on a corrupt goalkeeper taking bribes thereby saving a club called Overtown from being relegated.
 
citykev28 said:
i'm quite sure it was daniel amokachi. i remember this period of everton's history. there was a certain 'pride' amongst an element of their support.
Click to expand...


Not half. One of my customers in the early 90's was a mad Everton fan and he bragged about how racist a club they were. He said they'd had one black player and he only lasted a couple of months (I can't remember if he said he made the 1st team) and I remember him showing me some "joke" stuff on a photocopied piece of paper.
The Everton tower off their club emblem was made into a KKK white hat and the latin had been changed to "coons out"
There was loads of other stuff on there
 
if you trawl through any clubs history you can find elements of racism - followed everton all my life and would dispute that many other clubs were much more racist off the field. on it its probably representative of merseyside in general. no big influx of blacks and a much lower presence in the city than say manchester. there was a time in the 80s where you might have seen the odd everton are white sticker but there was no great movement against blacks. i cannot speak for the board but you would only see a minimally higher number of blacks at anfield either.<br /><br />-- Wed Mar 16, 2011 11:23 pm --<br /><br />as for black players - cliff marshall 1975, and mike trebilcock 1965 spring to mind - so not true that amokachi was our first black player
 
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