In a special Age of Blue article, guest writer Nischal Schwager-Patel tells the inspiring story of Chelsea’s first black player, Paul Canoville.
Introduction
Throughout their rich 115-year history, Chelsea have seen some magnificent players grace Stamford Bridge.
Ruud Gullit took the Blues by storm as player and manager, ending a 26-year trophy drought with the FA Cup. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was a lethal striker, winning the Golden Boot in his debut season. And who can forget Didier Drogba, one of the club’s greatest ever players and pioneer of that Champions League triumph?
Three legends, all black men, who etched their names into the history books. But none of that would have been possible without Paul Canoville: Chelsea’s first-ever black player.
The Early Years
To understand what it meant, you must realise the hardships he faced prior to his time in blue. Canoville was born in Southall, 10 miles west of the Bridge, to a Dominican father and an Anguillan mother. But his father was absent throughout his childhood, while racism was rife in the 1960s with far-right fascist group National Front.
“It’s very difficult to understand for me, because my mum and dad separated when I was two, so I didn’t have a male figure growing up,” Canoville told Nischal’s Blog. “National Front was really big, racism was really torrid at that time in Southall, and it was scary. It wouldn’t be advisable to be walking home on your own on certain evenings, because you’d be attacked many times.”
Football was always the dream for Canoville, and becoming a professional footballer was the opportunity he had been waiting for his whole life.
Harsh Realities
He signed for Chelsea in 1981, making his debut four months later against Crystal Palace. Making your debut should be the finest moment in a player’s career, but for Canoville, it was traumatic.
Racism was widespread across the English game and the nation as a whole, but Chelsea in particular had a poor reputation. For a club who, in 77 years of existence, had never had a black player in the first-team, Canoville’s arrival was momentous yet hard to accept for a loud section of Blues fans.
“The guv’nor [manager John Neal] calls me, tells me to warm up, and I thought, ‘Yeah that’s it, this is it. You’ve been waiting for this day,’” Canoville explained. “Then you hear all this racism gestured at me. I didn’t realise at first – I thought, ‘Wow, Crystal Palace fans are a bit dark’. But I turned around, and found it was from my own fans that were racially abusing me. That was difficult, really difficult to take.”
“To receive this racism shouted at you by your own fans, it just drained me. I was so excited – that excitement just dropped. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to do nothing, just wait for the referee to blow his whistle. With football, we always had banter in the changing room with the lads. This was the only time the changing room was quiet. My teammates had heard it, saw it, and couldn’t believe it.”
Any player wants to win over the fans upon signing, but when you are treated differently purely because of the colour of your skin, that becomes a challenge. “For me, it was so difficult. It was a thought period of, ‘What can I do to get them on my side? What do I have to do?’” Canoville said. “It was like I had to play twice as better than my teammates to try and get accepted by the fans.”
Battling against the racist bigots was an unfortunate part of Canoville’s Chelsea career, having to endure disgraceful abuse at every game. The mental scars of racism are painful to overcome, whatever the circumstance. But to be racially abused playing the so-called beautiful game, by fans who are supposedly supporting you, all because you are a different colour: that is the cruellest scar of them all.
Worst of all, the racism ran even deeper into the roots of the club.
“There was one situation where my chairman [Ken Bates] was in the changing room giving a black joke, and all the white boys laughed, but I didn’t,” Canoville recalled. “He asked, ‘Canners, didn’t you find that funny?’ and I said, ‘To be honest, I didn’t. And furthermore, I don’t want to hear any more black jokes when I’m in this room’. Maybe our relationship went downhill because I said that. But enough was enough.”
For all the abuse he had to suffer, Canoville did his talking on the pitch. A brave winger, he brought a breath of fresh air to Chelsea’s attack, helping them win promotion back to the top flight in 1984. He was bright and energetic going forward, but was more than happy to track back and defend – a valuable asset for any winger.
The Turning Point?
Canoville’s finest moment came on 30th January 1985, in a League Cup replay with Sheffield Wednesday. The game itself was just one reason for the day’s significance, as he met his father afterwards for the first time in 21 years. “I was so nervous. I wasn’t even thinking about the game, I was thinking about meeting him,” he admitted.
Starting as a substitute, Sheffield Wednesday were 3-0 up at half-time, looking set to cruise into the next round. But when Canoville came off the bench for the second half, he made an instant impact at Hillsborough.
Canoville kickstarted the revival by scoring inside 11 seconds, with the second and third goals quickly following. He completed the comeback with what seemed to be the winner, a dramatic 4-3 win for Chelsea. But Wednesday fought back with a late equaliser, ending in a 4-4 thriller in Yorkshire.
Even if the Blues did not head home with the win, it changed Canoville’s fortune at the club. “From that game, I was definitely accepted,” he explained. “The notorious Shed End were now shouting my name – if I’ve gone out at that time before, when they named the players, I got booed. To know my dad was there to see the performance, it couldn’t have come any better. That was the game that changed everything for me at Chelsea.”
Canoville eventually left Chelsea for Reading in 1986, having made 103 appearances in royal blue. But a cruciate ligament rupture all but ended his career, announcing his retirement from professional football the following year at the tender age of 25.
The Final Word
For Canoville, it was not just his quality as a player that earned him cult hero status at Chelsea. His bravery, strength and resilience to overcome racism is inspirational, having to fight harder than anyone else to be accepted. Many black players have gone on to play for the club, but without Canoville, they may never have got the chance.
From being racially abused to having his name sung on the terraces, the tale of King Canners is one to celebrate.
Special thanks to Nischal Schwager-Patel (@Nischal_SP) for his excellent insight and exclusive quotes. He recently interviewed Paul Canoville for his blog, and you can read the full interview here.
Edited by Rob Pratley
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