The Three Degrees: The Men Who Changed British Football Forever
Rees PaulWhen Cyrille Regis became one of
the first black players to be selected for the full England team, he was
sent a package in the mail. Inside it was a silver bullet and a note
that read: ‘You’ll get one of these through your knees if you step on
our Wembley turf.’
In the 1978/79 football season Regis' club
West Bromwich Albion, an unglamorous and little publicised club from the
West Midlands, became the first British football team to field three
black players: Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson. They
did so against the backdrop of the most divisive and poisonous racial
tension in the UK’s history – a time when the National Front movement
was at its most virulent.
This book will tell the story of a
defining and groundbreaking chapter in the history of British football
and the country as a whole. The story is one about sport but also as
much one about social change.