YOUNG GIFTED & BLACK COUNTRY

Article on Continental Star General Manager Lincoln Moses by West Bromwich Albion Magazine

If you read our lengthy interview with Albion’s youth recruitment guru Steve Hopcroft over Christmas – and if you didn’t, see me after school – you’ll know that the future of the Throstles rests with a veritable army of scouts, busy running their eye over junior football all over the midlands. As Steve said, these are the foot soldiers, out in the wind, the run, the snow and the mud, looking to unearth the next Zuiverloon, Greening or Bednar. And as Steve said, they get precious little recognition or reward for it.

So we were delighted to hear that one of their number, Lincoln Moses, was awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours List, though as we’ll discover, it was for far more than scouting work alone, the official citation saying he was rewarded for services to community football. So, before heading to the Palace and a meeting with HRH, another weighty accolade came Lincoln’s way – a grilling for “Albion”.

His footballing background centres on inner city football in Handsworth where he has had a lengthy relationship with Continental Star, playing for them initially, before going on to take up the role of General Manager. It’s not surprising he was offered the position for while he’s quietly spoken, when Lincoln talks, you’re advised to listen because he speaks with authority and experience, one of those to whom leadership comes naturally.

“I joined the Army at 16, learnt a lot about organisation, about leadership and brought that back with me. I played at Continental Star, then 23 years ago, I was made General Manager there, and that set everything in motion. We’ve got 15 teams now from under 7s to over 35s, who regularly win the league because we’ve got players like Paul Devlin, four ex-Jamaican internationals, it’s a good side! But we’re no longer just a football club, it’s more a social enterprise. We have homework clubs where we get 100 youngsters, we have mentoring, counselling we work inside schools, we teach social responsibility. So we don’t have coaches, we have mentors because it’s important to develop relationships with the youngsters. We try to give them alternatives so they don’t follow the other journey to guns, knives, drugs. City United are similar and others too, and that’s crucial in a city so vast.”
Given their success, you’d have thought the local clubs would have beating a path to their door, but as Lincoln, says, that’s a much more recent development.

“I met Steve Hopcroft eight years ago when he was at Birmingham because my son, Aaron, was identified as a player they were interested in, when he was 11. They were that desperate to sign him, Hoppy actually called me when I was on holiday in the Caribbean, back in St Kitts where I was born. We arranged to talk when I got back and we’ve had a relationship from there ever since, and that’s continued since he’s moved to the Albion. My son signed, having played at Continental Star, which is the longest running black led football club in the country at 35 years now, and Hoppy came to see what we had there, he was interested in a few other players and we took things on.

“In fact, even before my son went to Birmingham though, the first boy I ever had signed from there was a young boy called Romaine Sawyers who I brought here at the age of eight when it was Bobby Hope that was running the youth show. Romaine is in the reserves here now, so hopefully he’ll go on and get himself a professional contract. I remember dropping him at Willingsworth School for the Centre of Excellence because it was the only way he could get there. I think we have to remember those days when Albion’s kids were training at a borrowed school, even when the current crop are up at the dome. You must never lose sight of where you’ve come from, your history. If you know where you’ve come from, you know where you are heading.

“Anyway, me and Hoppy saw we could work together and set up various ideas. One was what we called development days. Within the inner city in Birmingham, there’s a lot of talent but hardly any clubs had scouts in there, so my remit was to identify players and take them to Birmingham City at the time. The idea was they played a bit, did some training and the best would be called back. Hoppy wanted 60 – I took 192! From that day, 41 boys were put on a register of players they wanted to keep an eye on and ultimately 16 got signed at different age groups. From there, the development days have been a regular thing, and over the last few years, the Academy has regularly signed youngsters from an inner city background.

“A lot of young black boys, they can lose direction in their lives sometimes and I’m looked upon as a surrogate figure, a father, solicitor, just about everything. When they have a problem, nine times out of ten, the boys I work with phone me first, then talk to a parent and that’s been how it’s been for years. They trust me and I would not put them into an environment or a club that I didn’t think was healthy for them.

 “It’s tough for those boys because a lot come from single parent families. A lot live with their mother who maybe has a couple of other kids to look after too, so she can’t find the time to ferry the boy to training nights and so on. Hoppy fully understands that and Albion have done a lot of work in bringing boys to and from training, and that gives this club an edge in trying to sign young boys.

“Dan Ashworth was clever in bringing in some of my contacts to work as role models with the boys so that it’s easier for them to integrate into their new surroundings. You can’t just take a boy out of his life, drop him in somewhere else and expect him to get on with it. You look at a case study like Jermaine Pennant who has had his problems over the years. Looking from the outside, for me, a lot were caused by allowing him to be taken away from home in inner city Nottingham as a boy, and dropped into London with a massive fee round his neck, a boy who’s never even had a bus pass he’s so young! He’s on thousands a week, no role models as far as I’m aware, and left to fend for himself. Yes, he’s got to be responsible for his actions, but you are creating a problem that need not have been there. Clubs and the FA need to adapt things so young boys have somebody to relate to, an open door policy. They might not like it or want to acknowledge it, but all clubs and the governing bodies have a social responsibility.”

Talk of social responsibility, and talk of Handsworth inevitably leads to the issue of racism in football. But Lincoln is quick to challenge that as lazy thinking, suggesting that racism is only a constituent part of much bigger social issues.

“I do a bit of work with the FA and the highlight has been going to the Houses of Parliament for a showcase about Kick It Out and Show Racism the Red Card. There were 23 MPs there, and I spoke to them. But I didn’t want to talk about racism because at grassroots, it has changed and things are better. A long way from perfect, but better. Within inner cities, the problem is a lack of facilities. Secondary schools close, a lot of youngsters go out to school by bus and by the time they get home at night, there’s nothing to do. So they either play on computers or, if they haven’t got them or they got bored by them, they walk the streets with their friends and if one lad is disaffected, the cancer spreads. For me, it’s not racism, it’s all the problems you need to address within a community. If you don’t change the system, everything gets worse, and by the end, the people were relating to it. If you have a deprived area, the youngsters you’re trying to engage come with baggage, it follows them. It isn’t a black thing, a white thing, it’s about backgrounds, opportunities, engagement.

“With the FA, we’re looking at this glass ceiling, what it is that stops people from an ethnic minority background climbing the coaching ladder - Brendon Batson is involved in that too. So, for example, we identify a youngster from a disaffected background who has a Level 2 coaching badge and we try to get him up the ladder, onto Level 3 and into work. There are a lot of boys who have that qualification but go no further with it. We’ve got two who are working with the Community Programme, two who have signed up as coaches for Under 9s and 10s at Walsall. We’re looking to use that as a pilot and take it on to show what can be done.

“So racism isn’t gone, but we can’t just focus on a single issue, especially as it has been transformed inside our football grounds over the last 30 years. I would say the likes of Cyrille, Brendon and Laurie here along with lots of others elsewhere played a huge part in improving race relations in this country. As a youngster, I used to go with my friends to watch Villa a lot, and I remember coming here and standing in the Smethwick End to see a game and for some reason, Albion warmed up in front of the Villa fans. They kept chanting “Nigger, nigger, lick my boots”. Lads who I thought were my best friends were doing this as well, there were people throwing bananas, I was 15 in the middle of this wondering what on earth was going on. So I asked them, “What’s all this about?” And they were saying it was just a joke, it was a laugh. Peer pressure, some people think things are acceptable if somebody else does it. They don’t understand. But Brendon and Cyrille and these guys stood up to it and I’m privileged to know them because they made a massive contribution to society. It’s still there, because I’ve got a young Asian lad who I took to another club and he’s getting the same stuff that was in the news with Prince Harry the other week. It’s not a joke. But the boy told me that if he makes a fuss, it makes it easy for the club to get rid of him because they don’t want the media spotlight if he complains, so he just takes it on the chin for the sake of his career. That’s very sad.
“But those guys in the 1970s showed what can be done. The next frontier for football is the Asian community, and why aren’t many of those boys coming through, because there are good players there. Yes, in the past, family pressure has been an issue because that community has tended to want their children to go to university and into the professions, but the third and fourth generation do want to get more involved in sport. I think there will be a substantial number signing in the next few years. And that will help change attitudes again.

“Football is the biggest tool out there for social cohesion. All you need is a ball or something resembling a ball, throw it out there and watch the kids gather and start playing, no matter who they are, what they are, where they’re from. Football can be a big tool to change society but you have to put all the other strands in there too.”
So. Lincoln Moses MBE. How does that sound?
“I was thrilled with the award. I was told on 15th November and had to keep it quiet until New Year’s Eve. It shows people that a simpleton like me can actually get through the system, and now I can use the tag to open doors and make pathways for youngsters less fortunate than me. That’s what I’ll be using it for.”
Rewarding people like Lincoln Moses is what the Honour’s List should really be about. Congratulations Lincoln, from everybody here.