The Three Degrees

The Dark Side of British Football in the 1970s

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When 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.