“I’ve had players over the years who were single and read books and so others [other players] said they must be gay…I think being openly gay would be something very difficult to live with in football…. You can get drunk and beat up your wife and that’s quite acceptable, but if someone were to say ‘I’m gay’, it’s considered awful. It’s ridiculous.” – Alan Smith, former Crystal Palace manager

“It really helped me to see that other professional sports people were acknowledging their sexuality. I read about John Amaechi, Gareth Thomas and Tom Daley. They weren’t footballers but the fact that they went public gave me the feeling that I was not alone” – Thomas Hitzlsperger, ex-German international

Modern football prides itself on becoming more and more progressive when it comes to social change. Racism has been tackled with partial success though there is still a dearth of BAME managers in the English game, hooliganism, from a domestic perspective at least, is less rife and match-going supporters are now safer than ever. Things are far from perfect, but the game is no longer quite so unreconstructed as it once was.

But there is only one issue that hasn’t been addressed or accepted within the modern age.

To date, only one top flight player has announced his homosexuality. Given the treatment he received, that is unlikely to change.

Justin Soni Fashanu was born in Shoreditch, East London in 1961 to a Nigerian father and a Guyanese mother. His younger brother John arrived just over a year later. Their parents split up when the boys were five and four and, unable to support them, Pearl took them to a Barnardo’s home.

Both children saw this as a rejection from both parents even though they still had contact with Pearl. Their father had returned to Nigeria and though Justin made brief contact with him when he was older, he remained away from their lives.

A foster home was found in Shropham, a small village in Norfolk and they went to live with Alf and Betty Jackson. They were the only boys of colour in the area and that came with its own problems, particularly when they started secondary school. However, given their height and strength they were soon able to look after themselves physically at least. The mental scars of that initial rejection, however, remained.

Both boys excelled as athletes and it wasn’t long before the elder brother attracted the interests of nearby Norwich City. Signing initially as an apprentice, he turned professional in December 1978 at the age of 17. John followed suit a year later though his rise through the ranks was less marked—for the time being at least.

Despite their closeness, the boys differed strongly. While John was renowned as a workhorse with a thirst for training, Justin was more aloof and relied on his natural talent. Justin was also forgetful and, on occasion, unreliable. Once, when he was involved in the England U21s set up, he forgot to bring his birth certificate when about to board a plane for an away game. In those days it was then a necessary document to travel.

Despite his scatterbrain, Justin’s rise at Norwich was mesmeric. He made his debut a month shy of his 18th birthday and began scoring regularly. In February 1980 he scored what was to be the Match of the Day ‘Goal of the Season’ against Liverpool. Around the country, children tried to replicate ‘the Justin Fashanu’. The goal featured in the opening titles of the programme for the next four years.

If you can’t picture it, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wk34X94Whk

That goal may have made him a household name around the country, but in Norwich he became little short of a sensation. There is footage of him signing football annuals in bookshops and being swamped by fans as he gets out of his car. He craved that attention and it inspired him to further success. In the 1981-82 season he finished as the club’s top scorer though it could not prevent Norwich from being relegated. It was time for him to move on and, in keeping with his big personality; there was only one manager who fitted the bill.

Nottingham Forest had faulted somewhat in the 1980-1 season. They’d began that campaign as European champions and Super Cup winners, but they were a diminishing force domestically, finishing 7th in Division One. Trevor Francis, the hero of the 1979 European Cup win, managed just 18 games that season due to injury and his manager’s insistence that he play on the wing. Ian Wallace was the club’s top scorer with just 13 goals. When Francis was sold to Manchester City, Brian Clough knew that they lacked firepower and turned to Norfolk to provide the answer.

Justin reacts to Francis departure

The move was a disaster from the start and the fee didn’t help. Justin became the first black player to move for £1m. The British record at the time was for Andy Gray who moved from Aston Villa to Wolves for £1.4m and it would be another few weeks before Bryan Robson’s £1.5m move to Manchester United eclipsed even that.

It was also the first time that Justin had been separated from John, who remained at Norwich. Though usually confident, Fashanu had misgivings even before setting foot in the City Ground.

In 1992 he told The Independent:

“That move was the biggest mistake of my life. I had an inkling it was wrong, and told the Norwich manager, Ken Brown, I didn’t want to sign. But I did, and if everything had gone correctly I might have been a very successful footballer.”

But it didn’t go correctly. He scored just three goals in 32 games as Forest ended the season in 12th place—their lowest since achieving promotion six years earlier. Furthermore, Justin became a laughing stock around away grounds. His manager, whose outlook was still moored in the 1950s, had no sympathy and criticised his new striker with anything that came to hand. When learning of Fashanu’s interest in the Nottingham gay scene he didn’t hold back his prehistoric views, stating in his autobiography:

“Where do you go if you want a loaf of bread? I asked him. ‘A baker’s I suppose.’ Where do you go if you want a leg of lamb? ‘A butchers.’ So why do you keep going to that bloody poofs’ club?”

Casual homophobia was rife in dressing rooms. Even Thomas Hitzlsperger who ‘came out’ after his retirement later admitted that he would call an under-hit ball ‘a gay pass’, but it speaks volumes that not only did Clough include that anecdote in his book for public consumption, he did so because he was proud of it.

Before too long Fashanu was even banned from the training ground. In one incident when he turned up at Forest’s training ground, the police were called.

He was loaned out to Southampton and eventually moved to near neighbours Notts County for a fraction of Forest’s initial outlay. There can be little doubt about why he left. His agent, Bernard Mendy, says in the recent Netflix documentary Forbidden Game:

‘Justin Fashanu’s career at Nottingham Forest ended because he was gay.’

A lack of goals was an obvious factor, but that would not prevent a man from being allowed to train.

Notts County were a friendlier prospect under the tutelage of Howard Wilkinson and his time at Meadow Lane saw a return to form, scoring 20 goals in 64 appearances. Sadly though he also picked up the injury which would end his career by degrees. A gash made from a boot stud became septic and Justin would spend a fortune on treatment. His misfortune continued after that. A move to Brighton in 1985 saw him score just twice before a knee injury more or less ended his dreams of top flight football.

This did not deter his lifestyle. The clothes and cars were still flamboyant and his predilection for rent boys never ceased regardless of income or prospects.

Soon even Justin’s fame within his only family waned. In 1986 the younger Fashanu moved from Millwall to Wimbledon and before too long ‘Fash the Flash’ had been surpassed by ‘Fash the Bash’

Justin’s early glory days at Norwich were not easy for John. Both were fiercely competitive and an inevitable sibling rivalry created bitterness. While Justin became the talk of the town, John was scratching around in the Third Division with Lincoln City. A move to Millwall raised his game and the move to an emergent Wimbledon saw him reach the pinnacle with an F.A Cup winners medal in 1988.

By that time Justin’s knee wasn’t strong enough for the English game so he moved to L.A and then Canada in a bid to resurrect what was left of his career. Spells with LA Heat and Edmonton Brickman followed, but by 1989 he was back in England, making a couple of appearances each for Manchester City and West Ham.

There was talk of him joining up with John and ‘the Crazy Gang’ but John publically poured cold water on that idea.

It was a move to Leyton Orient which changed his life again when his manager Frank Clark persuaded him to ‘come out’ and end the rumours. Maybe that would mean he could control his life a little more. He did so in October 1990.

John did all he could to persuade him to change his mind.

“I was a monster to Justin then. I paid him £75,000 not to say that he was gay. I was looking at the situation around us and my mother had cancer and was dying, and the rest of the family couldn’t understand the situation.

“We didn’t know what to do, the best thing I thought to do was to keep it quiet.”

In an act of stunning naivety Justin chose The Sun to be his mouthpiece. Hardly the bastion of morality, they paid him £70,000 for this story which was augmented to include salacious titbits about the Conservative MPs who had shared his bed.

The announcement was not received with anything like sympathy from the fans, media or his fellow professionals. Some refused to share a dressing room even though his sexuality was hardly news to them before he went to the press. That enmity even extended to his brother. The second the papers hit the streets John effectively disowned him.

Speaking in 2012, John even went as far as denying his brother’s sexuality.

“I don’t believe he was gay. Number two, I don’t believe he had affairs with MPs and number three I don’t believe he was having an affair with one of the young ladies from Coronation Street – it was just nonsense. Showbiz.”

Some of that is true. In 1992 Justin and Julie Goodyear of Coronation Street fame went to the press with a love story. ’My Bet on the Side.’ It was little more than an unnecessary publicity stunt that convinced no one.

Further trouble arrived when he was keen to broadcast his tales of sexual exploits with politicians. As long as someone was footing the bill and his name was in the papers he didn’t care who he annoyed. This backfired spectacularly When the MP Steven Milligan died accidentally of autoerotic asphyxiation during the time when Prime Minister was convincing the nation and his own Party to ‘get back to basics’, Fashanu saw it as a chance to cash in. He went to the News of the World and then the People with invented tales for as much cash as he could garner. Phil Taylor of the People said:

“He gave us the names of two cabinet ministers he claimed he had sex with. If the story could have been proved, it is just possible we might have coughed up £300,000, but we discovered he had absolutely no evidence. We never knew what is the truth and what is not the truth. You have to be very, very careful when dealing with Mr Fashanu.”

Unlike his stunt with soap stars, this episode damaged his reputation and the press had a field day, particularly the right-wing papers. Not only had he lied but he was black and gay. Every box ticked. His then club, Hearts of Midlothian, with whose fans he’d developed a rapport, sacked him and Justin returned to America.

Once again he tried to gain a contract at various clubs but now as a coach, occasionally lying about his age to prospective employers. He found employment at Maryland Mania in Ellicott City and tried to settle down again. His happiness was short-lived.

In March 1998 a seventeen-year-old claimed to police that, after a night of drinking, he had awoken to a sexual assault by Fashanu. Justin was questioned by the local police, but not held or charged. By the time they visited his apartment with a warrant, he was on a plane back home. At the time, homosexual acts were illegal in Maryland and Justin thought that he had no chance of a fair trial. He may have been right.

On the 3rd May 1998, he visited a gay sauna in Shoreditch where he tried to call John. His younger brother heard no voice at the other end of the line but somehow knew who it was. By now John had become exasperated and embarrassed by Justin and cancelled the call after only a few seconds.

Justin then found a deserted lock-up in Fairchild St, not far from his birthplace, broke in and hanged himself. He left a note saying that he no longer wanted to ‘give any more embarrassment to my friends and family.’ He was 37.

Justin Fashanu is now seen as a tragic figure in the game. Though certainly unreliable, vain and egotistical, he was ruined by both football and society’s judgment on his sexuality. Some good has come of his life, however. His name was adopted by the Justin Campaign, which promotes the inclusion of openly gay footballers in the game. Two years before his death, an online campaign was set up to enable him to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, which had just become a public vote. The votes were excluded.

John Fashanu, now older and less headstrong, is coming to terms with his relationship with his brother, just as Brian Clough later regretted his behaviour to his former player. Appearing on Good Morning Britain, John spoke eloquently about homophobia in the game and called the F.A to pay more than lip service to the issue. He argues that many gay footballers are advised by their agents and financial advisors not to ‘come out’ lest their ‘empires crumble.’ There is still a long way to go and Justin remains the only footballer to come out in the professional game. Simply put, the sport has failed to address the situation—a view that John Fashanu agrees with.

‘When we say of racism and homophobic situations, have they moved? Yes, they’ve moved—backwards.’

@TheCenci

@somegreengrass