Graeme is having a holiday, of sorts.

Over the next four weeks, as I travel around a post-World Cup South Africa, I will be looking at a number of issues including the effect the World Cup has had on the country and its people, as well as the debt Leeds United owes to black South African players. Being 10,000 km away also gives the chance to look back on some important events in the club’s recent history with a degree of objectivity. It also gives time to reflect on some of the oddities of being a football supporter and what it’s like to be an ex-pat fan.

Looking first at how South Africa has been affected by the World Cup, the short answer is – in a positive way. The whole country embraced the tournament and it has helped both tourism and the infrastructure with better roads and transport being particularly noticeable in the major city of Johannesburg. (The birthplace, incidentally, of super-sub Somma.) Something important has changed, too. There is a sense that football is no longer just for blacks, rugby just for whites, as the World Cup gained interest right across the board, including amongst the rugby-mad Afrikaners. Also, the fabulous Soccer City stadium which hosted the Final has recently been the venue of the Rugby Tri-Nations thriller between South Africa and New Zealand. Playing international rugby in a black township (in this case Lucas Radebe’s Soweto) was unthinkable until the World Cup, firstly because there was not a stadium good enough where blacks lived and secondly because the fear of violence was too great. As well as me, things have come a long way.

The ‘Let’s Kick Racism out of Football’ is a worthy campaign in England. It has made much progress and it has needed to. It was not easy for black players in the past and Leeds United had its moments of shame. You don’t have to be a very old Leeds fan to remember the disgraceful chant used when we were playing a team from, say, Merseyside; “I’d rather be a n****r than a Scouse.” This supposedly hilarious chant could be endlessly varied to fit Cockney, Brummie, etc but the racist slur was always the same.

Things are so much better in 2010. Black players are welcomed at Leeds nowadays – so long as they are any good, which is only fair. But it has been a long road and South Africa, particularly Johannesburg has played an important part in that journey. In July 1957, 27-year-old Gerry Francis, from Johannesburg, signed professional forms for Leeds. He was the first black player to turn out for the club and his signing encouraged a second player from the same city to sign for Don Revie and Leeds in October 1959 – Albert Johanneson – who went on to become the first black to play in an FA Cup Final when Leeds faced Liverpool in 1965.

I didn’t see Gerry Francis play but I did see Johanneson and remember all the ‘Come on Albert’ shouts of encouragement as he scurried down the wing. His failing career and decline into alcoholism and his premature death aged 53 may or may not have had something to do with his colour, but being a black person in the past in Leeds could be a lonely business. Plus the true test of our tolerance is how we treat people when they are no longer successful.

The year before Albert died, in 1994, Phil Masinga and Lucas Radebe signed for the club. The early days were very difficult for them as they tried to adapt to rainy England. Even though Masinga only stayed a couple of years, he clearly has fond memories and his website to this day proudly features him in his LUFC kit, Thistle Hotels shirt and all. Proudly, his site talks of how, in 28 games, he scored ‘five crucial goals’! Meanwhile, Lucas has risen to iconic status after a wonderful career. He is held in such high regard both in Leeds and South Africa that Nelson Mandela on an official visit to Leeds told the dignitaries: “This is my hero.”

“I felt I could burst with pride,” was Lucas’s modest reaction. “I was thinking: ‘Me? A hero to him?’ He’s a true hero.”

We shouldn’t have had to come so far to find out that we could look up to black men, but, still, I think we’ve finally made it. 

Graeme Garvey.