Great article in toadays Daily Mail about a Testimonial which took place on May 15th 1979 for WBA player Len Cantello. It was a West Brom XI v a Cyrille Regis XI consisiting of only black players of the time. A photo of the side shows stars such as Cyrille Regis, George Berry, Brendon Batson, Remi Moses, Laurie Cunningham and also includes QPR players Derek Richardson and Bob Hazell (then of Wolves). True pioneers of the game and bought back a few boyhood memories. Just goes to show how times have really moved on for the better.
Bob Hazell was a man mountain. Danny ****tu of his time. I don't remember Derek Richardson, should I?
Funny mate, I'm the same, I loved Bob Hazell, and your description of him is spot on. I also didn't recall Richardson but looked him up and found he was our goalie for 31 appearences betwwen 1976-1979. Anyone remember him ??
Derek Richardson was our keeper after we sold Phil Parkes. I vaguely remember him being not very good, I can't remember if he was that bad or if Parkes was just a hard act to follow and almost any goalkeeper would've looked bad trying to follow him. I used to live in Denham house (opposite the club shop) and my dad used to work saturday mornings. 1 saturday he came home from work and found a car in his parking space so he parked right behind them so they couldn't get out. He then went to ther game, when he came out of of LR he waited by the cars to give the other driver a piece of his mind. When Bob Hazell turned up to get into his car (he'd turned up late and parked as close to the ground as possible) my dad sensibly forgave him. Great player and a lovely man
Didn't Everton do that sometime into the 80's? I seem to remember a fuss about them being the only club not having any black players
I remember people always referring to him as 'Big Bob Hazell'... but that could have been something to do with the showers.
Spurs did that as well Arsenal already had half a team of black players so that was talked about quite a lot
Bob Hazell was one of the best players in Venables' early 80's side. I can still see him flicking on those near post corners for the likes of Clive Allen and Paul Goddard.
Bob Hazell - how many own goals!!!! - It seemed every time I was stood behind the loft, good old Bob would forget his bearings and nod one into our net.
Seems from the article it was Cantello's idea (he was white). A way of getting more black and asian faces in to watch football. As i said, different times
I did have a chat with Bobby Hazell when they were having a light training near Loftus Road 1980. We change few words with Bobby, David McCreery, Chris Woods and Dean Neal (remember him?. They all were very nice and they were wondering what a finnish boy doing there. It was my first visit to LR, and i was also in Shrewsbury in our away match. Shrewsbury beat us 3-0 and Bobby Hazell was sent off and the reaction of Shrewsbury crowd was intangible. Those morons throwed few bananans to the ground and made somekind of ape-voices. Bobby was a big strong center back who always put 110% effort and was also in our FA Cup team agaist spurs 1982.
