That really is a nice one, Cyrille

Cyrille Regis battled racism throughout his career but today’s MBE ensures his place as a national treasure, writes Martin Swain.

Cyrille Regis’s rich legacy as an iconic sporting figure is recognised by his MBE today.

See also: The career of ‘Smokin Joe’ Cyrille Regis MBE

It’s nice one Cyrille, MBE

The former England striker was accorded respect and admiration from supporters wherever he journeyed in a career which, over 20 years and 700 appearances, brought him five caps for his country and more than 200 goals.

And while his day job at 50 may see him utilise his stature in the game in his work as a football agent, he is equally lauded for a wide-range of charitable efforts whether with Christians In Sport or visiting the drought-hit regions of Ethiopia to promote WaterAid.

But it is the Cyrille Regis of West Bromwich Albion in the late 1970s and early 1980s which strikes the most telling and important image of his career and which will spring to the mind of a generation of Britons as they hear of his MBE today.

Regis became the proud symbol of the advance of black athletes in sport in a nation still gripped by racism and hostility to its ethnic minorities.

It was Regis and his fellow “Three Degrees” Albion stars Brendon Batson and the late Laurie Cunningham who took on and beat the racist bullies then thriving on the terraces and did so much to persuade British politicians to grasp the nettle of race relations in this country.

Regis and his colleagues provided such an inspiration for black sportsmen and women that, to this day, you will still hear them name-checked by their successors who now - hopefully - have no concept of what that legendary Albion trio went through during a much more sinister era.

Batson was as smooth a full back as it is possible to imagine and Cunningham a winger capable of dazzling performances. But it was “the big man,” Regis, who stood at the fulcrum of this triangular symbol of a changing Britain.

It’s difficult even for a bigot to denigrate someone over the colour of their skin when they are so ruddy good. And that was Regis - in full flight, a peerless, magnificent footballer of power and skill the like of which had rarely, if ever, been seen before in the domestic game.

That is not to minimise the stupid and sickening abuse and intolerance Regis and his pals endured as they made their mark. But slowly, drip by drip, the lunatic fringe was silenced as white, working class English football fans found arguably the first footballing role models they could not help but admire. And the walls came tumbling down.

“We were a radical sight at the time, that’s for sure,” said Regis as he reflected on his award and his career yesterday.

“Three black guys in a First Division team - people hadn’t seen that before and we must have taken some getting used to. I speak to black footballers today and tell them about going to Millwall or West Ham and have 5,000 fans chanting ‘Nigger, nigger, lick my boots’ and they just cannot believe it.

“‘No way’ they tell me. They just can’t believe it. And that’s good because it means they have no notion of it and cannot comprehend it which shows we must be making some progress.

“It’s funny because I was 50 this year and that has brought a lot of reflection. Throughout my 30s and 40s I never really thought about it but there was something about hitting 50 that had me looking back at these things in a way I never had before.

“And being part of that sea change for black footballers, breaking those barriers . . . it was a big thing and I realise that more and more.

“And I think I’ve got to say something which I’ve not really made clear before and that is my gratitude to Albion fans. We must have been quite a sight for them, too, but they accepted us straight away and made us part of the family. They were very supportive and have been ever since. It was quite a time for them as well I imagine.”

Regis’s reflections will have taken in the very different phases of his half century, from his earliest memories of life in French Guyana before his father left for London in 1962 and his mother a year later bringing with her the young Cyrille, sister Nila and brother Imbert.

School in Harlesden, football in the Regents park and Barnet Sunday Leagues - which also cannot have been a barrel of laughs - and then into non-League football with Hayes where he was famously spotted by Ronnie Allen and signed for the Baggies in 1977.

But the young Regis who then cut such a swashbuckling path, both on and off the pitch, through the top-flight game changed dramatically with the death of Cunningham in a car crash in July 1989.

It triggered an emotional response in his old pal which led directly to his becoming a Born Again Christian and changed entirely his outlook on life.

“I always think about Laurie, always miss him,” he says. “I was with Brendon only recently and thinking that the old ‘three degrees’ will never be together again.

“But I got a call off a writer who is doing a book on him I think and who had tracked down Laurie’s mum in Jamaica. He passed on her number and I spoke to her just last week. She is in good spirits although, unfortunately, she lost Laurie’s dad five years ago.

“But, yes, I always think of Laurie . . .”

He would have been as proud as the entire Regis clan at Cyrille’s elevation alongside his junior partner in the annals of Black Country strikers, Steve Bull, to the MBE.

His second wife Julia has tried to persuade her husband to have a bit of a bash but that is not his style - “a little do here with some pals and then maybe one down in London with all the family. That’s enough fuss for me.

“But I am surprised and delighted at the award. I know that’s what everyone says but it’s true. It is a good feeling to be recognised in this way. I feel I have got much behind me - 30 years in the game, charity work, an agent, but I’m 50!

“I still feel great, run a lot” - and Regis looks impossibly fit and well for a man with a half century behind him - “but I might only have another 30 years.

“I better get a move on because there is always so much to do.”