Emeka Nwajiobi

Transformed from chemistry student to English football’s top flight via Dulwich Hamlet in just one month! Blink and you missed it.

Celebrating Black History Month with another former Hamlet man.

The 24 year old Emeka Nwajiobi played only four times for Dulwich Hamlet and became an instant sensation. Three goals in his first two games – Barking (1) and Bishop’s Stortford (2) – brought the scouts to Champion Hill in November 1983. And then in came David Pleat’s Luton Town with a £10,000 offer the club could not refuse, and he was gone.

Hamlet manager Eddie Presland, who signed Nwajiobi for Dulwich, described the striker as, “Certainly the best I have ever seen at our level. A brilliant future is in store for this so talented forward.” John Lawrence, our revered press secretary, said, “Meka displayed an outstanding ability rarely seen in Isthmian League football.” Just before his brief stint with the club he was working part-time in a high street chemist and completing a degree in Pharmacy, but his ambition was to become a professional footballer.

Born in Anambra, Nigeria in 1959, he had a quite a distressful childhood. As an eleven year old his family escaped civil war for Britain during the Biafran conflict. Here he cultivated his game and as a sixteen year old earned the first of five caps for England Under 18s.

Nwajiobi made the first of his 87 Luton appearances on a cold January evening against Nottingham Forest. Brian Clough’s side won the match 3-2, but the Nigerian chemist crowned another debut with a goal.

His time at Luton Town coincided with the club’s best period in their history. David Pleat masterminded promotion to Division One in 1981 and before the decade was out Luton had finished in the top ten on three occasions and featured in a Wembley final. Pleat should be applauded for giving so many black players an opportunity in the game when racism was still rife and a huge blot on the football landscape. However, when questioned how racist taunts affected him, Nwajiobi replied: "They don't bother me as I realise that most of them are done just to get you riled. White players have things said about them too, and although the comments are different, they are really the same sort of insults. It's no big deal anymore."

Talking of blots, at the same time hooliganism was also prevalent, and Nwajiobi was a member of the Luton side which took part in the tarnished FA Cup tie against Millwall. It was dubbed the Battle of Kenilworth Road, when disgraceful crowd scenes took place before, during and after the match with several pitch invasions.

Nwajiobi’s career was cut short through injury in 1988, but not before he received a Nigeria call-up for a World Cup qualifier against Tunisia in 1985.

Not long after Emeka Nwajiobi left Dulwich his brother Ileanyi joined the club. He also scored on his debut, but Ileanyi was to play just one more game that season. He did however, return three years later for a further 11 appearances in 1986/87. This time both forename and surname were too much for Eddie Presland, who decided that “His name is practically unpronounceable and we have decided to call him Nigel.” A name he appears to be stuck with for life!



Jack McInroy, October 2015

Dulwich Hamlet Celebrate Black History Month

Gavin Rose opens the BHM exhibition (Photo: Duncan Palmer)

A couple of images from the Dulwich Hamlet Celebrate Black History Month exhibition.

 

 Nigerian international and Hamlet wizard Joseph Odegbami.

A street in Cairo, Egypt. Hussein Hegazi was Dulwich Hamlet's first ever African player.

On Saturday 3 October 2015 an audio recording was made of the unveiling of the Dulwich Hamlet Celebrate Black History Month Exhibition.

It can be found about nine minutes into the excellent Forward The Hamlet podcast.

Click HERE for another image (pdf file) from the exhibition, which is being held in the bar at Champion Hill until the end of October.

Many thanks to Gavin Rose the Hamlet's longest serving manager who took the time to do the honours, Mishi Morath, the DHFC Supporters Trust and the Football Committee.

Jack McInroy

Black History Month Exhibition 2015

Dulwich Hamlet FC celebrates Black History Month with an exhibition in the clubhouse at Champion Hill. 

The Hamlet Historian has curated and designed the exhibition, which has been jointly funded by the Dulwich Hamlet FC Football Committee and the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters’ Trust. We have also valued the support of the Forward the Hamlet podcast. 

Gavin Rose, the club’s longest serving manager and first black manager, will open the exhibition at 1:00pm on Saturday 3rd October.  

The match against VCD Athletic that follows has been designated a ‘Pay What You Like’ match. 

Click to see one image from the Black History Month Exhibition

Alan Simpson

Best known for Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe & Son, Galton and Simpson are arguably the greatest comedy writing duo of the twentieth century. The aged Alan Simpson, is also the President of Hampton and Richmond Borough Football Club. Dulwich Hamlet beat them in the FA Cup today and have a further two encounters in the Ryman Premier League in the next six weeks.

Alan Simpson, Tony Hancock and Ray Galton.

I spotted Mr Simpson at half time and had a very brief chat with him. I read somewhere that he played for Dulwich Hamlet after the war, and I asked him if this was the case. Sort of, it was the Hamlet’s Junior team, the under 18s, that he turned out for. And it was only actually one match. “It was Boxing Day morning 1946.” He told me. “We lost the game 8-3 and I was in goal.” His services were not required after that.

Perhaps it was for the best. Whilst recovering from tuberculosis in a Surrey sanatorium a few months later, he met Ray Galton, another inmate at the hospital, and the pair hit it off instantly. The staff even allowed them to perform some of their early comedy ideas on the hospital radio station. And thus began a lengthy writing partnership that brought them great acclaim.

At sixteen I was studying my CSEs at Peckham Manor School. Among our English reading material – Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, etc., – was Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe & Son television scripts. Being something of a mimic, I was always asked by our teacher to read aloud one of the parts during our English lessons. I could ‘do’ both characters, Harold and his ‘dirty old man’ Albert. One time I was called upon to read both parts.

Around the same time I had a number of friends who were hooked on Tony Hancock. We used to sit in cars and rooms laughing our heads off, and pass around cassettes and LPs of these famous radio and television shows from the fifties starring the man himself alongside Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and Bill Kerr. Even today, forty years later, we still find ourselves quoting lines from Hancock’s Half Hour.

I thanked Mr Simpson for giving us Hancock and Steptoe. The latter is still one of my favourite ever television comedies. He seemed to genuinely appreciate the thanks and patted me on the shoulder. Then I left him to himself to enjoy the match. It was end to end stuff, but Dulwich scraped a victory at the death, an Ashley Carew converted penalty after which he picked up the ball and blasted it into the crowd, and straight into a woman’s face! “Oh dear!” I thought. Words echoing what Ray Galton and Alan Simpson wrote for Tony Hancock in the SundayAfternoon at Home episode: “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh, dear me.”

Jack McInroy, 12 September 2015