A clip of West Brom's famous visit to China over three decades ago has recently surfaced on You Tube. It's only 2 and a half minutes long but that's enough to convey the shock of the culture clash experienced by the players (and no doubt the Chinese.)
Once You've Seen One Wall You've Seen Them All
The above quote is well known of course. Some other gems in there too though - "never mind the food, get on with the fags" and "I've bent balls round bigger walls than this."
I recall reading somewhere that Big Ron was asked for his views on the standard of the teams that WBA played, and he was supposed to have said - amongst other things - that they'd been able to expose "the chinks in the defence."
That's got to be apocryphal hasn't it?
We often use examples like these to illustrate the limited horizons of many professional footballers of the era, but were they not simply reflecting the British public in general at that time?
Once You've Seen One Wall You've Seen Them All
The above quote is well known of course. Some other gems in there too though - "never mind the food, get on with the fags" and "I've bent balls round bigger walls than this."
I recall reading somewhere that Big Ron was asked for his views on the standard of the teams that WBA played, and he was supposed to have said - amongst other things - that they'd been able to expose "the chinks in the defence."
That's got to be apocryphal hasn't it?
We often use examples like these to illustrate the limited horizons of many professional footballers of the era, but were they not simply reflecting the British public in general at that time?
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