+ Visit Cardiff FC for Latest News, Transfer Gossip, Fixtures and Match Results |
My first thought was Steve Mokone, probably our first African player.
But then I remembered Tommy Best from the late 1940's. Wikipedia states that he was the first black player at Chester and Hereford United but doesn't say he was our first black player. Was there someone before him?
That's a surprise!
I was wondering after seeing the Cardiff Coty Foundation pieve on Black History Month.
There's a new book out detailing the first back player at every one of the 92 league clubs (Football's Black Pioneers, published by Conker Editions), just wondered who they have for Cardiff City.
I always understood it was Tommy Best. in 1948. Apparently he had a West Indian father and a Welsh mother and his nickname at Cardiff was, and I am quoting, "Darkie"!! Never heard that rumour about Derek Sullivan, I thought he had ginger hair! Steve Mokone was about 1957 and the next I remember was probably Clive Charles.
Not Derek Sullivan, no way.....first true black player for CCFC was Steve Mokone. I remember him making his debut....
I got Derek Sullivan's autograph in 1960 and he had brown fingers mind, not genetically brown but from his sixty a day Capstan Full Strength consumption, he liked a steamed pasty or three at the old cafe down by Ninian Park Halt too. Hope this helps.
I was surprised to see that he settled in Hereford in the 50s and lived there for the rest of his life as it wouldn't have been the most accepting of places in those days to black people and had a completely different culture to Cardiff.
Hereford has become very cosmopolitan in the last decade or so.