Garth Crooks Names 10 Footballers He Hated!

He was celebrated. He was criticised. He was given awards and he was also given more airtime than most people thought was strictly necessary. He was called a windbag by some, a moral guardian by others, and a great many things in between that would not be appropriate to say before the watershed on a Sunday evening. But if you genuinely want to understand why one of the BBC's most recognisable football voices once spent three full paragraphs on national television arguing about a player's haircut, you cannot start with the haircut. You have to go back further. Much further. Back to a moment long before any column, any broadcast, any Team of the Week selection. Back to the moment someone decided that HE WAS RACIST for enjoying football, and that the men on those terraces, the ones spending their Saturday afternoons hurling the worst possible language at a young black professional just trying to do his job, were simply paying customers who were entirely entitled to say whatever they wanted. That was the system that greeted Garth Crooks when he arrived in professional football. That was the world he played in. And that world left a mark that no number of television appearances, no amount of column inches, and no collection of passionately worded opinions has ever fully removed.