{"id":49645,"date":"2016-10-27T18:24:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T18:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49645"},"modified":"2016-10-27T18:24:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T18:24:21","slug":"the-pioneer-black-manager-who-became-don-revies-superspy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49645","title":{"rendered":"The pioneer black manager who became Don Revie’s ‘superspy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pioneer black manager who became Don Revie’s ‘superspy’<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/a>
\n2016-10-20<\/p>\n

Jim White<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\n Tony Collins<\/a> became England’s<\/a> first black manager at Rochdale<\/a> in 1960 Credit: Jon Super for The Telegraph<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

When he managed Rochdale<\/a> back in the early Sixties, Tony Collins<\/a> earned \u00a31,500 a year. Fifty-four years on, as he sits reminiscing in a care home in Manchester<\/a>, there are two managers in the very city where he is speaking who each earn \u00a310\u2009million a year. But he is not remotely resentful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t begrudge them getting good money,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause we were exploited. Oh dear, were we exploited. When I was a player, if Stan Matthews<\/a> was in town, you could guarantee the gates would be locked. The crowds flocked to see him. Or Tom Finney<\/a>, or Wilfy Mannion<\/a>. What players they were. Artists, entertainers. But they never got the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things might have changed financially from his day, but one thing has not: ethnic minority managers remain a scandalous rarity. In that respect, Collins was a pioneer. The assumption has long been that Keith Alexander<\/a> was the first black or mixed-race manager in the Football League<\/a> when he took charge of Lincoln City<\/a> in 1993…<\/p>\n

…Collins\u2019s story, told in a new book<\/a> co-authored by his daughter Sarita<\/a>, is an extraordinary one. He was born in Kensington<\/a> during the general strike in 1926<\/a>, his 17-year-old mother refusing to identify his father on his birth certificate. One thing was immediately obvious, however: his dad was black. Mixed-race children were an unusual sight in London<\/a> in the 1920s. But his mother\u2019s parents adopted him and brought him up in the then tough environs of the Portobello Road<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pioneer black manager who became Don Revie’s ‘superspy’ The Telegraph 2016-10-20 Jim White Tony Collins became England’s first black manager at Rochdale in 1960 Credit: Jon Super for The Telegraph When he managed Rochdale back in the early Sixties, Tony Collins earned \u00a31,500 a year. Fifty-four years on, as he sits reminiscing in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,10],"tags":[81,8952,25312,8951,7738,25310],"class_list":["post-49645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-england","tag-football","tag-jim-white","tag-soccer","tag-the-telegraph","tag-tony-collins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49646,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49645\/revisions\/49646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}