BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Billy Boston is a Wigan legend and in the late 1950s Hull FC tried to get him to join their club.
Tony Collins, in his new book Roy Francis: Rugby’s Forgotten Black Leader, details how Francis, then coach of Hull FC, attempted to sign the history-making Welsh winger.
Francis was the first black player to play for Great Britain and the first black professional coach in British professional sport. Collins writes how the revolutionary coach and fellow Welshman targeted Boston’s signing for his Hull FC team.
“In December 1957 Hull approached Wigan about signing Billy Boston,” Collins writes.
“Ever since he joined Wigan as a 19-year-old in March 1953, Boston had been a superstar. He scored 12 tries in his first five matches for the club, and after his sixth game was selected for the 1954 Lions tour to Australia and New Zealand.
“Built like a Sherman tank and possessing the grace of Rudolf Nureyev, Boston became the youngster player – and the first black player – ever to tour Down Under. The sheer brilliance of Boston dazzled all who saw him.
“As his Wigan career accelerated, he nonchalantly broke all of the club’s try-scoring records and soon became universally loved by its fans. But the club was still run on the paternalist principles of the Victorian factory.
“In 1956 the directors humiliated Billy when they made him write an apology for his performance during the club’s narrow loss in a Challenge Cup semi-final. Playing with an ankle injury in the unfamiliar position of centre three-quarter, he was accused of arriving late in the dressing room before kick-off.
“In fact, he had been looking for his pregnant wife Joan to make sure she had a ticket for a seat. It’s difficult not to draw the conclusion that the directors needed a scapegoat, and the stereotype of the lazy, undisciplined black man made it easy for them to blame Billy.
“The love felt for Boston across rugby league did not necessarily protect him from racism. In 1957 RFL secretary Bill Fallowfield concocted an injury story to leave Billy out of a short tour of apartheid South Africa on the way home from the Rugby League World Cup in Australia…
“In August 1964, Billy responded to racist insults from a spectator at Swinton by going into the grandstand to find the perpetrator, who decided that discretion was the better part of cowardice and ran off.
“But Billy was too big a star for Wigan to lose, and Roy’s attempts to lure him to East Yorkshire came to nothing.”
Boston spent 15 years at Wigan where he scored a club-record 478 tries in his 488 appearances.
Today, the 90-year-old has finally been knighted, the first person to be knighted in Britain for their rugby league playing career.
Roy Francis: Rugby’s Forgotten Black Leader can be purchased here.