How football’s Three Degrees inspired the next generation

To get an idea of the impact of football’s Three Degrees, consider these words of gratitude from Premier League Hall of Fame inductee Ian Wright.

"I owe these guys everything, for me to be able to come and express myself exactly how I am on a football pitch,” he says.

Wright, one of English football’s most charismatic and expressive footballers, was empowered to be himself after watching West Bromwich Albion’s trailblazing trio Laurie Cunningham, Cyrille Regis and Brendon Batson growing up.

Former Crystal Palace and Arsenal forward Wright is just one in a long line of players who will forever be indebted to three pioneering players who overcame horrendous racism to change the misplaced perceptions about black footballers and create a path for future generations to follow.

Cunningham, Regis and Batson came together at West Brom in 1978.

Graceful and gifted winger Cunningham and Regis, an unstoppable striker at his peak, had moved to The Hawthorns the previous year before intelligent full-back Batson joined them, following his former Cambridge United manager Ron Atkinson to West Brom.

Atkinson coined the nickname by which they became affectionately known when American soul group The Three Degrees attended a West Brom match during a visit to Birmingham.

“The press were talking to Big Ron saying, 'It's great to have The Three Degrees here at the club watching the game,'" the late Regis once recalled.

"Typical Big Ron, [he said] 'We've got our own Three Degrees' - and it stayed forever since.”

Rising above racism

But if that was the light-hearted side to their story there was a far more depressing one too.

Cunningham, Regis and Batson were among the small group of around 50 black players trying to carve out careers in English football back then, an era when racism was rife and came without repercussion for perpetrators.

It came from the stands. Black players were constantly targeted with monkey chants, sickening gestures, jeered and spat at. Having bananas thrown at them was also the norm.

It came from managers with many at the time holding negative opinions of black players, their abilities, work ethic and refusing to pick them purely because of the colour of their skin.

It took place outside grounds where right-wing groups brazenly spread their hate and, on occasions, even confronted and attempted to intimidate black players.

It came to their homes along with those of their manager and team-mates. Cunningham once had a petrol bomb chucked on his doorstep.

Before his England debut against Northern Ireland in 1982, Regis received a bullet with a letter warning he would get one through his knee if he stepped on the Wembley pitch.

Atkinson received hate mail telling him not to pick them while captain Bryan Robson was questioned for playing alongside the trio.

It would have been easy for Cunningham, Regis and Batson to be deterred.

Instead they simply became even more determined, making a mockery of doubts about black players' bravery.

“We just said to the people who gave us stick, ‘See you next week, next month, next year – we’re not going away’,” Regis said in his autobiography, My Story.

And they did not. All three shone for Atkinson's entertaining West Brom side that is now etched in folklore and was the first to regularly feature three black players.

They finished third in Division One in 1978/79, their one season together before Cunningham, the first black player to represent England professionally at any level when he featured for the Under-21s in 1977, moved to Real Madrid.

That was the Baggies' highest finish for 20 years. They also reached the UEFA Cup quarter-finals.

One of their most iconic displays that season was a 5-3 win at Manchester United, a victory which the sensational Cunningham and Regis scored in and was secured against the backdrop of the home crowd’s racism-fuelled hostility.

Batson, sadly the only remaining Three Degrees member still alive following Cunningham’s passing in 1989 and Regis’s in 2018, told The Birmingham Mail it was “a seminal” game because they showed what black players were capable of on such a grand stage.

Commentator Gerald Sinstadt, who highlighted the racism on air, said following its conclusion: “It's the final whistle at the end of a superb game of football and the magic that black footballers are bringing to the league, completely in evidence.”

Cunningham and Regis’s dazzling displays that season earned them places in the 1978/79 PFA Team of the Year.

To the bigots and doubters of black players, the Three Degrees proved how wrong they all were.

Meanwhile to black people they were heroes, with their inspirational impact on those who have followed in their footsteps part of a considerable legacy which also includes a statue of them that stands proudly outside The Hawthorns.

“You hear the testimonies of players whose lives changed for the better because of what we achieved and you have to feel proud,” Regis also wrote in his book.

“Players like Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and Ian Wright have all said that we inspired them, and that’s very flattering.

“Looking back, I can see that we were pioneers, opening the door for the diversity of players you see in the beautiful game today, who are judged purely on their ability to play football.”

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