Ex-Villa hero Mark Walters tells of race-hate hell

Walters was pelted with bananas by opposition fans after moving from Villa to Rangers but dealt with the abuse stoically.

Before making it with boyhood heroes Villa, Walters was one of the lucky boys in his Dunlop Terriers youth team after escaping the attentions of paedophile Ted Langford, who also scouted for Villa during the 1970s and 1980s. Langford was jailed for three years in 2007 and died in 2012.

Promoting his newly-published biography, Wingin' It, at Ibrox, Walters said: "Working on the book was very cathartic. A lot of things I hadn't spoken about for years and it was good to get them off my chest.

"If there's a little child somewhere in Britain that takes some inspiration from it, I'll be chuffed.

"You have to set your goals and dedicate yourself, and I think anything is achievable."

The winger always felt he had to be twice as good as other boys because of the colour of his skin. But there were other hurdles facing young footballers.

"I remember one of the players' fathers saying 'Mark, if you don't pass the ball more often you're never going to play' and trying to drum out the things I was good at.

"And people like Ted Langford, who ruined a lot of people's careers by physically abusing them.

"A couple of lads in that team have even tried to commit suicide because of all the problems they had with that.

"As long as people can talk about these things and get it out in the open, if one child can do that because of my story then that would be good."

Walters faced racism during his time at Villa but it was nothing like he experienced after signing for Rangers in 1987. He was subjected to monkey chants and fruit-throwing on his debut at Celtic Park, and was hit with a banana at Tynecastle weeks later.

Recalling his debut, Walters said: "The thing I remember is some man being in the papers before in the game - boasting is probably the wrong word - but just telling everybody what he was going to do when I played - all the fruit he had bought ready to throw at me and things like that.

"But typical footballers, we all had a laugh about it on the bus. I don't know if I was laughing at it or with it at times. I will never forget those things.

"I have always said football is a reflection of society and the fact it has stopped virtually - I have not heard about any incidents anyway – says a lot about how things have come on, which is fantastic."

Walters, who went on to play for Liverpool, added: "My inspirations were people like Cyrille Regis. I looked at the way he dealt with it and I had some friends who didn't deal with it that way, who dealt with it, if you like, the Eric Cantona way and were fighting every minute.

"I know that was the best way to deal with it. If I reacted to it, I wouldn't be any help to my team-mates or myself, so I dealt with it the only way you should do really.

"If I had reacted the way a lot of people said I should have, it would have ruined my career and I wouldn't have played for some of the biggest clubs in Britain."