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abuse, but I was much better off playing football. Compared to other black people, we had a good life.
    United’s improvement under Atkinson had brought the club the kind of success that the relatively new league members could only have dreamed of, and at the start of the 1977/78 season, the newly promoted outfit had made a good start and were in a healthy position when Atkinson left to join West Bromwich Albion. A few weeks later in a £30,000 deal, Batson joined Atkinson at Albion. The Three Degrees had arrived at The Hawthorns.

CHAPTER 2
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THE LEGEND OF CES PODD
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    ‘I think the only thing that gets you through things … events as it was at the time … was being surrounded by the right people and how you handled that, and at the time, Bradford was a safe haven for me. I had coaches who liked me … I’d proved that I could play and the fans were great so that was enough for me.’ – Ces Podd
    BEFORE REGIS, CUNNINGHAM and Anderson, there was Ces Podd. Footballing club culture dictates that the player who has made most appearances for the first team is automatically and inalienably afforded the status of club legend. Between 1970 and 1984, Podd made 502 appearances, more than anyone else in Bradford City’s history, but his influence on the progress of black footballers was down to more than merely his record number of appearances. At age nine, Podd had arrived from St Kitts with his family and settled in Leeds. As a pacy winger, he’d had trials with Manchester United and was invited to sign professional forms that the club had posted to him. He’d signed the forms, and on them indicated his Caribbean birth, at which point he never heard from United again. He was then invited for a trial at Wolves. He travelled from Leeds to Wolverhampton and assembled along with other trialists in the hope ofimpressing enough to secure a professional contract. At the trial, two teams were picked and Podd was told he’d have to come back another time. He was the only black kid there.
    As a result of this second knock-back, Podd decided instead to enrol on a graphic design course at Bradford College of Art. Soon after starting his course, he was invited to attend trials at Bradford City. At the trial, the same chain of events that had occurred at Wolves began to play itself out in similar fashion. Two teams were selected and once again, as the only black kid at the trial, he was told there wasn’t space for anyone else.
    And then the first-team manager was there, and he said, ‘We’re short of a left-back, anybody play left-back?’ And I put my hand up, and I got on the pitch, and at half-time he said, ‘Right, we want to see you again.’ And that’s how my career started. I went home that night and practised kicking the ball – I’d never used my left foot! I played the whole season without them knowing I was right-footed, I was that scared they’d find out.
    Eventually Podd moved to right-back, where he played for the majority of his career. Playing entirely within the bottom two divisions of English professional football, he was never afforded the kind of recognition that many of his contemporaries – the Three Degrees, Anderson, Crooks etc. – received, but as one of a handful of black players plying their trade in English professional football he endured the racist abuse that was a key feature of the experience of black footballers throughout the 1970s and ’80s. His experiences of racism would have a profound effect on him, his family and his career choices.
    Podd’s mother couldn’t bear to watch her son receive so much racist abuse. After the first game she attended, she refused to watch him play. His father, however, continued to attend, travelling to away games on the official supporters’ coach, where he was treated, as Podd puts it, ‘like family’. Podd’s commitment and no little skill had endeared him to the club’s supporters, and it was the supportive atmosphere they created that provided