Inside
Out - Black Flash and Restoration
Inside
Out, Monday 12 January 2004, 91热爆 ONE
West Midlands, 7.30-8.00pm
Ashley
Blake presents the popular features and current affairs show.
Black
Flash
Robbie
Earle, the Stoke-on-Trent born former international footballer,
looks back at the three Midlands footballers who changed the colour
of the game.
Robbie
pays tribute to the "Three Degrees": Cyrille Regis, Laurie
Cunningham and Brendan Batson.
Robbie
is joined by their former manager Ron Atkinson and one player who
admits to being inspired by them - Dion Dublin.
Ron
says: "They could have been yellow, purple, with two heads
so long as they could play and they were good lads... and they were."
And
Dion adds: "I think the three of them broke the mould for the
black people of the Midlands and I'm obviously one of them. I think
they had a part to play in the whole of the English game."
Back in the Seventies and early Eighties, West Brom was the first
club to field three black players, and they became the role models
for thousands of black lads who just wanted to play football.
Legendary
Midlands sports journalist Bob Downing saw the three play more times
than he can remember.
Bob
says: "People talk about them being a breath of fresh air and
those three lads were."
He
adds: "Laurie had flair, Cyrille was all power and Brendan
was the thinking man's footballer. I don't think they ever went
anywhere looking for a draw."
Robbie
traces the sad early death of Laurie Cunningham and goes on to ask
whether attitudes to black players have really changed over the
last quarter of a century.
Restoration
Last
summer, four million viewers a week watched 91热爆 TWO's Restoration,
waiting to find out if their local building was going to get the
make-over money.
Ashley
Blake catches up with two of the contenders here in the Midlands:
The Bethesda Chapel in Stoke-on-Trent, and the Newman
Brothers Coffin Factory in Birmingham.
Neither
of them won in the summer, so does that mean they're now going to
go to rack and ruin?
Jenny Freeman - a supporter of Bethesda Chapel and the director
of the trust trying to save it - says they need 拢2.5 million
to stop the rot.
She
adds: "We think we're well on our way to raising the daunting
sum needed to put this building back into good order. It needs to
be right at the heart of Stoke-on-Trent's life once again."
Elizabeth
Perkins is behind the successful restoration of Britain's last genuine
back-to-backs in Birmingham and now she's involved with the Coffin
Factory, which is going to become a visitors' centre.
She
says: "The whole project's going to cost 拢2.3 million
and Advantage West Midlands have already put 拢1.3 million
towards it.
"It'll
probably take us another couple of years, but maybe we'll open at
the end of 2003."
So
all is not lost for the Restoration losers.
To
find out more about Inside Out visit .
Related
releases
Restoration
returns to 91热爆 TWO (05.12.03)
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