A few days ago a thread started on the Featherstone Rovers Fans Facebook page about 'black players' who have played for Featherstone.
Although no-one would claim that Rugby League is perfect in this regard it is certainly true that we have been way, way ahead of other sports.
The sport has a rich legacy of black Welsh players, predominantly from the Tiger Bay area. It has always been portrayed that these players 'came north' for the money but that is by no means the full story. Many came because of the racism in rugby union which meant that they had no chance of playing at international level or even for the top Welsh rugby union club sides.
The foul nature of racism in sport is illustrated by the rep honours for one of the Fev players. Before he came to England, played in a rugby union team named the 'South African Coloureds'. Even if he had been the best player in the world he would have been excluded from the official national Springboks team. He later became the first player born in South Africa to play for the Great Britain rugby league team.
Indeed, rugby league in this country was the first sport to include black players in the national team, the first sport to have a black player captaining the national team and the first sport to have a black head coach for the national team.
So, as we head into our centenary, we wanted to celebrate the ethnic diversity of those who have worn the iconic shirt of Featherstone Rovers. We thought that we would try to compile a list of the 'black players' who have played for Rovers. But very quickly we realised that the category 'black' was both misleading and itself excluding the rich diversity in both rugby league in general and Fev in particular.
So we adopted the 'BAME' classification, BAME standing for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity. In other words, including all who are not of the Caucasian race, the majority ethnicity in the UK.
Included in our list are players of African and Asian descent, of indigenous New Zealand (Maori) descent, indigenous Australian descent, and people of South Sea Island descent (including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga). The category would also include those of the Semitic race (like fevnut!) but we are not currently aware of any to have played for Featherstone. Many people are unaware that the Semitic race includes not only Jews but also Arabs.
The first attempt to produce a list was posted on facebook and attracted some helpful posts about names we had omitted. We will be grateful for any further indication of names we might have missed.
People have asked who was the first to play for Featherstone and it does seem to be Francis Jarvis in 1978.
