It was Jim Cannon's 1st testimonial - he played against a Vince Hilaire X1 which contained only black players.

I remember the WBA game against a black team received loads of publicity whilst ours received very little. Incidentally whilst Cannon was a Palace legion comments in Ian Wright's book has clouded my opinion of him a bit - but playing against a Black X1 in the 80s was pretty groundbreaking.

I loved Hilaire and the crowd always picked up when he had the ball. I can honesty say i have never heard any racism from Palace fans and i put a lot of that down to Vince's influence. Watching football in the 70's and 80's was a difficult time so well done Palace and Vince

Really enjoyable read,didn't realize that Ernie Wally was so feared by all the players,also Alan Ball at Pompey seemed to be a right character!

Having now read the book, it really is a great read for any of you who were around at the time!! It’s exactly how I remember the rise and fall of our team and club at the time, plus a lot more obviously as fans we didn’t know!!
And don’t let it put you off the amount of stuff about the Pompey/Alan Ball years, that’s fascinating stuff as well.

Quite a sad book really. It is an many ways though a brave publication as Vince recognises the fact he could have done better and explains where he went wrong . Others probably acted in the same way and have bigger scars or worse to show for it

I remember Vince as a crowd favourite who used to excite us all but so often provided disappointing performances and I think the book reflects this. The reasons are made clear in the book and perhaps it should be compulsory reading for all young players who are not smart enough to apply themselves .

He was ,I believe ,liked by most of the crowd in those days and his very own song "We have a Brown boy on the wing" was sung with affection because he was (and one of relatively few pros of colour at the time , it was not intended some sort of racial slur) and he did play on the wing .

When you read the book it is a bit contradictory about Kenny sansoms transfer . My recollection was ,in those days of NO socila media , there a lot of gossip on the street that Ken needed the transfer to fund some problems that were hanging over him and that Ron had to let him go to save his neck .But gossip is gossip what do I know .

I found myself feeling that way, really as soon as he left Pompey it all started to go down hill, admitting that he gave up trying at Leeds and then at Stoke he was just totally useless because the heavy drinking and life style while at Pompey had caught up with him and ending up working on a building site

Good point, much as Kenny’s a legend as well, I thought the same, he did make it about himself too much!!