For 46 years, Roly Gregoire kept the worst of it locked away. The bananas thrown from the terraces. The monkey chants that followed him from the tunnel to the centre circle. The away trips where team-mates would go for a pint and he would stay on the coach, because he had learned which towns were not safe for a young black man in a Sunderland tracksuit. Now 64, the man who became the first black player to represent Sunderland AFC in 1979 has finally decided to talk — and the picture he paints is one English football has spent four decades pretending it had moved past.
The boy from Hendon who broke a barrier no one wanted to name
Gregoire signed schoolboy forms at Roker Park in 1977 and made his senior breakthrough two years later under manager Ken Knighton, becoming the first black footballer in Sunderland’s 100-year history. The milestone went largely unmarked at the time. There was no club statement, no photograph in the matchday programme, no acknowledgement from the Football League. Gregoire, a quick, two-footed winger raised in the city’s Hendon district, was simply expected to play.
What followed, he says, was a level of abuse that left scars he has only recently begun to describe. In a series of conversations with Sunderland’s heritage project this month, Gregoire confirmed he was subjected to monkey noises at training-ground sessions, racial slurs from supporters at Roker Park, and physical intimidation on away days at grounds including Millwall, Leeds and West Ham. On one occasion, he says, a banana was thrown at him as he warmed up at Elland Road. He played the full 90 minutes. He did not tell his parents.
“There were times I wished I had never kicked a ball,” Gregoire said. “I loved football. I still love football. But the price I paid for being the first — I would not wish that on anyone.”
Why the silence lasted 46 years
Gregoire’s career at Sunderland was short. He made a handful of first-team appearances before drifting down the pyramid via spells at Hartlepool United and non-league clubs in the North East. By the mid-1980s he was out of the professional game altogether. He spent the next four decades working in youth coaching and community sport on Wearside, rarely referencing his own playing days, and never publicly discussing the abuse.
The reasons, he says, were partly cultural and partly institutional. Players of his era were not expected to complain. The Professional Footballers’ Association had no dedicated welfare provision for black players until well into the 1990s. Kick It Out, English football’s anti-discrimination body, was not founded until 1993 — 14 years after Gregoire’s debut. By the time the language existed to describe what had happened to him, he had already buried it.
His decision to speak now has been prompted, in part, by the deaths of two contemporaries from the first wave of black professionals in England — players who, like him, never told the full story. Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson at West Bromwich Albion are remembered as pioneers. The names beyond the Three Degrees, Gregoire among them, are not. He wants that to change before his own generation is gone.
What it means for Sunderland — and for football’s memory
Sunderland, newly promoted to the Premier League under Régis Le Bris and preparing for their first top-flight season since 2017, have confirmed they will formally recognise Gregoire as the club’s first black player ahead of the 2026-27 campaign. A plaque is planned for the Stadium of Light. The club’s foundation is in early discussions about a permanent education programme built around his testimony.
- Gregoire’s debut in 1979 predates the formation of Kick It Out by 14 years and the FA’s first anti-racism charter by more than two decades.
- Of the first 20 black players to break through at English First Division clubs between 1977 and 1982, fewer than half ever spoke publicly about racist abuse during their careers.
- Sunderland’s current first-team squad includes nine players who identify as Black, Asian or of mixed heritage — none of whom, before this month, knew Gregoire’s name.
That last fact is the one Gregoire keeps returning to. He is not asking for sympathy and he is not asking for compensation. He is asking, simply, to be remembered — and for the cost of being first to be entered into the record properly, before the men who paid it are no longer here to read it. Forty-six years on, English football is being given another chance to listen. Whether it does so this time, rather than reaching for the next anniversary statement, is the only question that matters.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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