Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
The first black player I can remember is Leeds' South African winger Albert Johansen (probably spelt his surname wrong). After that came John Charles (Clive's brother) who was also a full back for West Ham in the mid sixties. West Ham were pretty exceptional in the early seventies as I believe they may have very occasionally had three black players in their side (Clive Charles, Clyde Best and Ade Coker), but it was when West Brom had Brendan Batson, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham as regulars in their staring line up in the late seventies that black players started to become commonplace in the game.
City had some black players before my time like Tommy Best, but, thinking back, apart from Clive Charles, I can't think of seeing any others in our team until the Bennett brothers arrived in 81/82 - they were joined for a few weeks by Godfrey Ingram and I seem to recall there was some sort of feeble attempt in the local media to refer to them as the Three Degrees just like the West Brom trio I mentioned earlier were.
I always used to say that Dave Bennett was my second favourite City player after Ian Gibson, but I think Sludge is right when he says Gary might have been more important to us - Gordon Owen did a great short term job in replacing Dave and I'd say Dave's talents came more to the fore at the higher level of the First Division. He was many people's choice as Man of the Match in Coventry's FA Cup Final win over Spurs in 1987 and I'd say he was was good enough to have been capped by England. Gary was some player as well, quick, good in the air and strong, he was a quality defender for us and didn't do badly as a striker for us at times - he's something of a legend at Sunderland and I believe he's still involved in match commentaries for them.