Wembley’s Windrush moment offers reminder of barriers for black players

A unique celebration took place at Wembley last week. Inside the main banqueting suite of the national stadium, generations of black footballers, their friends and family, and others from the English game, gathered to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush. There was jerk chicken, potent rum punch and much laughter, but the challenges that faced those first Caribbean immigrants and their descendants were not far from mind either.

Luther Blissett reflected on being reunited with his parents as a five-year-old after they, like many who left the West Indies for England, had had to travel without children to take up a new life. He recalled the first time he was called the N word as he grew up in Willesden, north-west London. Finally, he spoke too about becoming the first black player to score for England, on his debut, with a hat-trick.

Hope Powell also talked about being outside the football system, wanting to get in. She saw no one like her on TV or in the stadiums, she had to play in boys’ teams to get a game, or at least she did until authorities took unprecedented measures to stop her from doing so. She then went on to do more than anyone to establish women’s football in the country. Jermain Defoe is younger but was still able to reflect on growing up in a council estate with a mother working three jobs; her determination and a pure, unquenchable love of goals helped him to achieve transformational success.

In some ways it seemed the relationship many of the black British players had with football echoed that of the Windrush generation and the country itself: no matter how much love they showed, it never quite loved them back in the same way. But another parallel existed too; each player had helped