Must win. Tricky away fixture. Threadbare squad. We need to keep momentum in this, our manager's swansong season. Forest, hovering just above the drop zone, are desperate for points.
Alright, I've gotten the cliches out of the way, now settle in while I tell you the tale of one Vivian Alexander Anderson.
Forest, for our more youthful members or those recently come to the sport, were something of a phenomenon in the late 1970s. Under the guidance of Brian Clough, their irascible, pigheaded, alcoholic showman of a manager, they won the European Cup in 1979 and then remarkably did it again the year after. That was the competition that would become the Champions League, the premier European battleground. You may recall we won it a few times around then.
Key to their success was Viv Anderson, a young black English defender who had signed as an apprentice just before Clough arrived. The new manager recognised talent and Anderson became a regular at a time when black players were not regular. He was greeted with bananas and other fruit during a warm up before one game. Clough apparently told him to go back out there and get him two pears and a banana. He also told him ‘You let people like that dictate to you, you’re not going to make it as a footballer. We’re going to pick somebody else.’ Not too many safe spaces back then.
Anderson was picked for England in 1978 and went on to play thirty times for his country. There is some argument but most people seem to accept that he was the first black player to play for England in a senior game, albeit a friendly. On his debut, he got personal telegrams from the Queen and Elton John. Folks, you have no idea what a big deal this was, in an era where there were maybe a dozen black players in the top division. It seems ridiculous from our modern balcony but England then, and by extension English football, was a white dominated place, and one where other colour folks were generally thought of as somewhat undesirable or suspect. I imagine the rest of Europe was little different. Liverpool wouldn't field their first black player, Howard Gayle, until 1980.
I remember the attitudes, they're lazy, they don't get tactics, they don't like it in the bad weather and the likes of Viv Anderson and Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis and a few others just...got on with it. Think of how it must have felt for a young black or brown kid at the time, to see someone like them on tv, playing for England, getting telegrams from the Queen, the feeling of being proud and validated and seen. I could do that. I could be a footballer, because Viv Anderson is brilliant and he looks like me. Anderson, in turn, had his own inspiration. “There was only ever one black face on the television playing football – a lad called Clyde Best at West Ham in the 1960s. Every time Match of the Day came on, Clyde Best would be there. I thought ‘yes, I could be like him’.”
Anderson was a fine player. Elegant, rangy, tough tackling and a scorer of some thumping goals. He was on the PFA Team of the Year twice, at right back. He was Alex Ferguson's first signing when he got the United job and we won't hold that against him. But he will be mostly remembered for the colour of his skin. That's the fate of people who push boundaries. They become known for the boundary, instead of the person they were. Well, he's still with us, leading a quiet and hopefully happy life in some leafy suburb somewhere so if by any chance this makes it there, here's to you, Mr Anderson.
