How Liverpool’s first Black footballer overcame racism to aid European Cup triumph

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Facing discrimination at Liverpool “I used to go to bed every night dreaming of being able to play for Liverpool and I was always wary that there weren’t any or many Black players in football,” Gayle told This Is Anfield. “I just said, ‘Listen, I’ve just been getting whats-a-named by Tommy Smith and his jibes and that going on from some of the other players in and around.’ “So my brother said to me, ‘We’ll come and get you tomorrow morning and we’re going in that club with you’.

“And I said, ‘You can’t do that’, because I knew what they were going to do. My brother, our kid, he said, ‘If you have to, pick up something and do what you’ve got to do’.” Gayle dealt with Smith in his own way.

He kicked off on me, ‘You Black this, you Black that etc.’ “I realised now that this was my moment so I’ve walked over to him and I said to him, ‘If you ever ever call me that again, one night you’ll go to piss in the middle of the night and I’ll be in your bog waiting for you, and you won’t like what you’re gonna get.'” The threat did the trick and Smith no longer bothered Gayle, who now had the support of other dressing room leaders, including Emlyn Hughes. “I didn’t expect it to be offered to me, but when it did, I always knew that I was always going to refuse it.” Idolising footballers from a range of backgrounds has become the norm thanks to those first Black players in this country, like Gayle, who had to overcome challenges their White counterparts didn’t.